How Political Liberty Saves The Planet
"To be sure," writes Shikha Dalmia at Reason, "I was on something of a luxury trip for journalists, carefully choreographed by the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation." But
unless somehow someone managed to prettify vast swaths of the countryside for our benefit, I couldn't help but think that, by any properly historically calibrated yardstick, the real story in China is not of environmental degredation, but of environmental progress. Still, China does have an environmental problem. But it stems from its moribund political system—not its growing economy.
The Chinese, Dalmia writes, have "added something new to the annals of autocracy: showy environmental projects. Call it prestige environmentalism. Beijing's remarkable metamorphosis is the clearest example," she concludes, of a shiny, happy state-run plan carrying "major dangers."
Try as Tom Friedman and company might, a command economy isn't the path to a greener earth.
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