A Call to Care

If you want to know, China’s Yellow River – the so-called “Mother River or “Cradle of Civilization” -- isn’t yellow. Where I saw it in Lanzhou in October, it’s closer to caramel or milk chocolate.

Much of its tint derives from the terra cotta colored soil along its 3,400-mile journey east from the Tibet-Qinghai plateau in west-central China to the Yellow Sea at the Bo Hai Gulf in north-eastern China. But much of its taint comes from human inhabitants along the way.

During its journey, the Yellow River receives water from the 435-mile-long Fen River (its second longest tributary) which flows through the city of Taiyuan, population 5.4 million, which has earned the title of “the dirtiest place on Earth,” as well as nearby Linfen, population 4-million, whose leading industry is coal plants. It’s not the Silk Road around here, but more like a “Soot Road.”

“The most sullied place on Earth,” is what this region is labeled by Thomas M. Kostigen in his sober 2008 work, You are Here: Exploring the Vital Link Between What We Do and What that Does to Our Planet.

The real value of this volume is that the author doesn’t let anybody off the hook. He doesn’t blame Communist China for its shortsightedness on environmental matters any less than he blames the democracies of Western nations – especially the US -- for continuing to demand products that are made in these and thousands of other Chinese factories which spew carbon into the air and spread waste into the water.

The book is a call to care. To think twice as we buy products and discard waste. If you’re a Michigander, you may especially want to read about our Great Lakes in a chapter titled, “The Greatest Problem No One Has Heard About.”

Written By: John E. (Jack) Roberts, MMLC Board Member