Ways That Are Dark

The junta in Myanmar gets rich and stays in power by ignoring environmental laws. The repressive military regime has found stolid friends in neighbors Thailand and China by offering them access to cheap raw materials and energy that feed their growing economies. According to a report by CNN:

Myanmar has become notorious in the region for ignoring international and its own environmental laws in a single-minded effort to make the money that environmentalists say helps keep the regime in power.

About 95 percent of Myanmar’s total timber exports to China are illegal, Global Witness said, costing its treasury $250 million a year. Much of the profits go to Chinese firms as well as regional military commanders and ethnic guerrilla groups, it said.

Read the complete story: In Myanmar, rivers, forests suffer.

Today is Blog Action Day, meaning more than 15,000 bloggers are going to be writing about the environment today.

This past year has been an especially bad one for the environment in China. Hundreds of thousands of people die each year from pollution. And this may just be the tip of the iceberg. This year has also seen the extinction of the rare Yangtze River Dolphin. China’s rapid development is destroying natural habitats and causing the disappearance of countless species. According to The World Conservation Union’s Red List, there are over 385 endangered species in China. With no slowing of China’s steamrolling economy in sight, many more extinctions can be expected.

But the news is not all bad. There is hope. Economic growth does not have to be “at all costs.”

To the south of China lies Viet Nam, a country with a similar economic growth rate. Recently it was reported that eleven new species were discovered in central Viet Nam. Also a socialist state, Viet Nam’s economy is likewise fueled by rapid growth. But the situation in Viet Nam illustrates that a balance can be found.

Any country that runs on the principal of “economic growth at all costs” is being run in a reckless and a short sighted way. The environment is an umbrella under which all aspects of life fall. Without that umbrella, no society can prosper.