Petty good article.

Added to China's water pollution as a growth hindrance there is air pollution - so obvious at the Beijing Olympics. Their is already evidence that these pollutants are incapacitating Chinese workers, in significant numbers, before their working lives are up. They then burden China's rudimentary health sector - or more usually they stay home and die early and quietly - an additional break on economic growth.

Discussion of Australia's options, outside of dependence on China, appears to be taboo by quiet Federal Government decree. Open discussion is contrary to Chinese culture and a threat to its position as our new senior trade partner. Is it any wonder that Rudd has been the conduit of this tradition of non-discussion?

Trading alternatives to China exist in many nations, including India, which has an unmet demand for our uranium (we won't supply India due to our Chinese economic and even warped ideological priority) and cheap coal. Japan is also a past major market that needs to be revisited. South Korea? Even Taiwan is an option - but at the risk of offending the Middle Kingdom.

That both India and Japan countries are economic and partial military competitors to China are issues that Rudd will need to ponder at the risk of bothering the increasing monopoly of his second love, China.

Pete

Hugo Rudd's plan is obvious ... attend to our personal hygiene and wash our dirty little hands then everything will be dandy.

A very very good article.

The longterm effects of the Three Georges Dams Project really should be of concern to the whole world.

I suspect Australia's Net Debt position might be of greater concern if/when the investment in US Sub-Prime and suspect Prime loans by our 'conservative' Banks are ever taken into account.

Kellie's article is correct I believe. The governments optimism that
it will have a 4.5% growth rate to pay back the loans is the most
ridiculous hogwash ever dumped on the Australian public.

Politicians like economists are quite convinced that the recovery will
come along to Kevin's timetable and growth will increase and save us all.

That is a business as usual scenario which will not happen.
As well as the points Kellie made the era of growth is over and with it
globalisation is finished. Localisation is the future.
Some politicians understand that peak oil has occurred but it is a fact
that cannot speak its name. It is just not politucally correct to
use the phrase.
Until the economists and politicians face it full on they will waffle
on about trade with China, exports and imports, currency exchange
rates etc etc as though they have a long term future.
Anything so long as they don't have to acknowledge the problem
before the next election.

This is an excellent article.
Last week Queensland businessman Clive Palmer announced a 30 year contract to supply coal from the Galilee basin. You have to seriously wonder if China will still be burning coal in 30 years time, especially if the link between burning fossil fuels and the depletion of the Himalayan glaciers- Asia's main water sources- become more obvious.
If China, or indeed any country,has to choose between having enough water or enough energy, you would think that water might come first. So the economics of changing from coal burning to renewable energy might look very different.
It makes you think that water might be the first real limiting factor on industrial economies. It is one resource that every person and every industry cannot do without. And it is one resource that even the richest country cannot buy, beg, borrow or steal from someone else.
What are the odds on China stopping burning coal by 2020? Even a few years ago it would have been inconceivable. But now?
And then what does this do to Clive Palmer’s 30 year contract?

What about desalination plants for water? If water becomes a problem in China won't they just import more coal and natural gas and build more nuclear power plants to extract it from the sea, desalinate it and pipe it to those who need it, rather than stop their economic miracle?

I understood that desalination is economically feasible for things like providing drinking water but is not economic , even for Chinse miracle economies, for providing water for industry, agriculture and restoration of ecosystem services (like fisheries and plant foods or replenishing aquifers).
I guess the question is what level of pollution is acceptable. For a nightmare scenario, try David Mitchells'amazing novel,"Cloud Atlas" (the section "An orison of Somni 451").Let's hope it never comes to that.

Let’s follow this to its logical conclusion, from China back to Australia. So China, like everyone else, faces the “Tragedy of the Commons”. For a city to build a desalination plant to cope with water shortage, or an individual to install air conditioning to cope with air pollution, benefits the individual but disadvantages the whole community and ecosystem by actually increasing the problem of environmental degradation. Diverting water (like the massive South (Yangtze)-North water diversion scheme- see Guardian Weekly Review 29-05-09) similarly benefits one area at the expense of a much greater ecosystem.
The Tragedy of the Commons particularly disadvantages the poor, not only by taxing them further but even to the extent of literally killing them earlier. The disempowered poor have very few options; poverty does not make good media; their jobs may well be in the polluting industries and their four “ways out” are striking it rich somehow, accepting their lot or campaigning for better conditions, either peacefully ( the Ghandi or Greenpeace option) or forcibly (the Taliban option).
There are three parties who can break this vicious cycle- governments, corporations and empowered individuals (the wealthy). Governments act by investment, regulation, incentives and penalties and some, like China, are steadily doing so, with enormous courage. Corporations and wealthy individuals then must play their part. So if capable individuals in wealthy Australia, like Clive Palmer, used their resources and evident abilities to fund clean renewable energy rather than coal, they would be contributing to solving the problem instead of actually furthering the vicious cycle created by mining more dirty fuels. Every hour and dollar they spend on coal is an hour and dollar that is not spent on the clean-energy future. If they were working on clean energy, regional Queensland could be acquiring jobs that realistically have good long term future prospects and Australia might be making its fortune by pioneering the technology of the future.
So it is comes back to us to take the initiative. Sitting back and waiting for China to “recover” is the least sensible, progressive, or responsible option for Australia.

Riccardo wrote;
And it is one resource that even the richest country cannot buy, beg, borrow or steal from someone else.
unquote

But that is exactly what China is doing. Their water diversion works
in the Himalayas will divert water from the Ganges in India.
If this does not a cause of war then we will be very lucky.

I really don't have an answer to all the problems China is posing and
I suspect that no one including the Chinese do either.