The most compelling piece of information for me was the comparison of China's energy consumption to the rest of the world. "China brings the equivalent of Britain's entire electricity production capacity online every year-almost once a week, China fires up a new power generator. In 2007, China captured the top spot from the United States as the greatest emitter of carbon dioxide…China uses more coal to power its society than the United States, the European Union, and Japan combined," (Dodson 81). I was really surprised by all of this. I knew that China was ahead of the world in emitting toxins and consuming the world's energy supply, but I didn't realize it was to this extent. The severity of China's usage is detrimental to the rest of the world and yet they have to sympathy for the harm they are placing on our planet. With the rate at which China is emitting carbon dioxide and burning coal, no wonder why our planet is in such a disastrous state. All this time I thought where we live is bad in terms of harm done to our planet; even though our emission rate is not stellar, at least we are consciously trying to make a difference and change our numbers.
Haley Martin
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