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« Video into Thin Air | Main | Partisan Burnout »

Red vs Green

A few weeks ago, Rammage asked whether the American Left would value communism over environmentalism. He specifically asked about the industrialization of China:

How can the Left, with their chosen religion of Environmentalism, reconcile that their beloved China is "desecrating" the earth?

As I pointed out to him at the time, the environment wins. This is because the Chinese aren't really communist - if they were, they wouldn't be at odds with the environment, because true communism is so lovey peaceful happy fun. But clearly China has taken a dark path in the last couple of decades, making widgets in sweatshops for nasty tree-hating Americans.

Modernization has brought with it a host of problems for the country's farmers -- among them, the loss of farmland to industry and the onset of industrial pollution.

Of course, under Kelo the Chinese government is able to take land from these farmers and give it to an evil corporation for a pittance.

Song Lingui is one of those farmers. Four years ago, the local government took his land and sold it to the chemical plant. He was given some compensation, but he says it was not enough.

The town and factory in this particular story (link) are not unique in their disagreement over safety and pollution. And obviously, I have no firsthand means of knowing whether the factory is actually at fault for anything. I just wanted to remind Rammage that industry is, in general, evil and ugly. Don't focus on any possible benefits of industrialization, or any personal culpability on the part of factory management or government bureaucrats. Think big picture. Green is the new Red.