From In These Times:
A new Chinese export has been spreading quietly across Asia and the United States: dust.
Violent sandstorms from China’s expanding deserts have been battering numerous Chinese cities, and now their mustard-colored dust has begun reaching South Korea, Japan and the west coast of North America.
“People dusting off their cars in California or Calgary often don’t realize the sand has come all the way from China,” says Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington D.C., who was in Beijing recently. “There is a dustbowl developing in China that represents the largest conversion of productive land to desert of any place in the world and it’s affecting the world.” [Full Text]
Read related article: “China Losing War With Advancing Deserts” from IECA, which says “Old deserts are advancing and new ones are forming, like guerrilla forces striking unexpectedly, forcing Beijing to fight on several fronts. And worse, the growing deserts are gaining momentum, occupying an ever-larger piece of China’s territory each year.”
(Photo of Dunhuang)
