The Devastating Effects of Pollution in China (Part 2/2)

NARRATOR: Much has changed in the valley, and much remains the same. The farmer tills his fields today as his ancestors did in ages past. A heritage endures. The people of the valley come and go. Life, in village and city goes on as generations have come and gone, the mountain streams have flowed on. The friendly earth still yields its produce. And cradling the valley, now as always, silent, lofty mountains keep their eternal vigil. DAVID FEINBERG: Every piece of coal in China is intended to go through one of the national coal factories. This is a private coal mine that was shut down by the authorities. Private mining is illegal, but since there's such a crazy demand for coal, a lot of people try to start their own mine in order to profit from the lucrative black market. Most of them are not successful and get fined or put in jail. -[SPEAKING CHINESE] DAVID FEINBERG: The enormous government factories are easy to spot. We drove by a lot of them but never hung out for very long because we didn't want the security guards to see us. -[SPEAKING CHINESE] DAVID FEINBERG: To get a better sense of the illegal coal industry, we went into the hills about two hours outside of Linfen. The area was still dense with pollution, and we started to see smaller factories and then what appeared to be some illegal mines. Since they're not regulated by the government and are operated using old methods, the illegal mines are a big part of the pollution problem. -[SPEAKING CHINESE] -[SPEAKING CHINESE] -[SPEAKING CHINESE] -[SPEAKING CHINESE] -[SPEAKING CHINESE] -[SPEAKING CHINESE] DAVID FEINBERG: Most of the people we approached for interviews were very friendly with us. But pretty soon they realized that the questions we were asking could get them in trouble. A lot of the residents of Linfen have been excluded from the economic prosperity that has come to the region. It's basically what happens when a bunch of farmers are forced to try to make a living from harvesting coal instead of harvesting crops. Everywhere we went, people seemed to be scavenging for bricks, metal, wire or anything else to make some money. After spending a week in Linfen, my eyes burned a little. My throat itched, and when I picked my nose, my burgers had turned black. -[SPEAKING CHINESE] DAVID FEINBERG: After almost a week in Linfen, the police came to our hotel. They didn't come to our rooms, but they had the hotel staff bring us what our translator said were registration forms. We were afraid that our tapes might get confiscated because, after all, we were filming illegally. We were basically there as tourists who happened to have professional video cameras. We got a last glimpse of the factories and empty rivers. It was as good a time as any to leave. -We are faced with a very short tiny window to make the right choices about our future. So it's not a question about whether or not China should develop. China has to develop in order to lift more people out of poverty. However, it's more about how China should develop. The local-level officials are still very much obsessed with just economic growth. Really, the evaluation of officials' performance have to change in a big way in order to give more incentive for those people on the local level to do more for the environment. DAVID FEINBERG: When the World Bank first named Linfen the most polluted city on earth, the Chinese government set about to improve the situation-- closing down factories, rerouting truck traffic, and there were even some signs around the city calling attention to the problem. As for the coal trucks, we were surrounded by them for another 20 hours as we drove back to Beijing. And we sat in our van at one tollbooth for about six hours in the middle of the night. All of the fumes helped me sleep through most of it, as coal trucks idled around us, and the car in front of us ran out of gas. Growing up, my impression of China was of a huge boulevard entirely full of bicycles. They've obviously been replaced by cars and trucks. And if you add the burning of coal to that, as well as all of the manufacturing that goes on, China is now the world's leading polluter. -I think that China is trying its best, tried to host a good Olympic game, and try to give a good impression for the whole rest of the word. Measures tried to clean up air for the Beijing Olympics-- if you look at them, a lot of them are very short term. It's about shutting down factories, and it's about having strict transport restrictions. You would actually be much more smart if we tried to think of long-term structural solutions. As a Beijing citizen, if I would have clean air for those two weeks in Beijing, and then afterwards, I would think, why can't I have that have every day? These are all things that can lead to much long-term thinking after the Olympics. DAVID FEINBERG: A lot of people say China is going through its own industrial revolution, but I think that China's problem is kind of a global problem. One of the biggest winners from China's economic rise are the Americans and other multinational companies who use cheap labor and materials to produce goods that are sent all over the world. As big a mess as China has to clean up, the United States is still the largest per-capita polluter in the world. China's claims that the blue skies have opened over Linfen is obviously false, especially when you watch the sunset end about 20 minutes early, when the sun sets behind an artificial curtain of smog. However, once the sun goes down, the stars do come out to shine in Linfen. -[SPEAKING CHINESE]