China Says Serious Polluters Will Get the Death Penalty 260
formaggio writes "According to the Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese government is now allowing courts to punish those who commit environment crimes with the death penalty. The new judicial interpretation comes in the wake of several serious environmental problems that have hit the country over the last few months, including dangerous levels of air pollution, a river full of dead pigs, and other development projects that have imperiled public health."
Good (Score:2, Insightful)
Good. About time someone did this.
This will only be enforced when convenient. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thou hast angered thy King (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know. If you have the death penalty I can see pollution being a worthy offense. If you dump toxic waste into the drinking water and dozens get sick and die of cancer-- how is that any different from murder.
Good for China. Here in the US we would just fine them a few million... they would shift their assets to a sub division... sell that to themselves and declare bankruptcy without paying a dime. Then keep on doing what they were doing until they got caught the next time.
They Can't Even Hand Out Fines Effectively (Score:5, Insightful)
There are several key problems here that are the real underlying problems: 1) the Chinese government is not unified in their vision of the environment and I'm talking differences spanning across provincial & federal levels as well as between federal ministries. 2) they collectively refuse to accept that their abuse of natural resources is part of their winning equation against other capitalist nation states and, as a consequence, no one can talk about how this will hurt their bottom line even though several parts of the government realize it (we pay them to import our pollution). 3) there is widespread corruption at all levels which is why fining is ineffective -- it's so bad that I'm sure if capital punishment is meted out, it will be given to the fork lift operator who dumped those pig carcasses in the river after his supervisor told him to "make them disappear or you'll disappear." No one up the chain will be held accountable and if they are, they need only grease some local wheels and they can consider themselves shielded.
It's disgusting and it's why I tell people where they can shove it when they complain that the EPA is destroying jobs. It's not perfect but we have to cling to things that kind of work when so many other "solutions" are abysmal failures.
The Chinese government is threatening to kill polluters but they can't see that they're part of and dependent on and benefiting from a system of habitual polluting. Increasing the impact of the punishment is a poor and maybe even more detrimental substitution for actually bringing to justice the true criminals up and down their ranks.
A whole lot of crimes need stiffer sentences (Score:3, Insightful)
Not just environmental stuff. What about the wallstreet guys that stole or in some cases hundreds of millions of dollars.
Death penalty. Think about it like this.... that is the life savings of how many people? Guy robs a liquor store for 100 dollars and gets 20 years. Guy that steals 100 million gets 5 years in a minimum security prison.
Many cases of fraud, theft, vandalism, etc need to carry stiffer sentences. While of course other sentences need to be reduced radically. All the drug related crimes need to be looked again. Consensual adults and all that.
Re:It says "environmental crimes" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thou hast angered thy King (Score:5, Insightful)
If you accept the legitimacy of the death penalty(obviously, if you don't, that's another story, and you aren't likely to approve of it for this purpose, or any other) serious pollution is actually highly logical:
The death penalty is usually assessed in cases of murder(esp. premeditated) or grievous bodily harm(especially premeditated or particularly gruesome in some way).
Well, guess what? Serious pollution is usually called 'serious' because it does, albeit at some epidemiological remove, cause some mixture of death and serious chronic health impairment, sometimes also nasty birth defects and the like.
It doesn't have the emotional punch of a nice juicy murder or a photogenic teenager getting raped or something; but pollution is a totally logical thing to punish by death(if you accept the traditional uses of the death penalty). Probably even better, in fact, because polluters are highly likely to be committing their crimes out of pure greed, not out of fear, passion, or other possible-to-rehabilitate/unlikely to reoffend motive.
Re:Thou hast angered thy King (Score:3, Insightful)
Whoever you feel like. Including the fellow who happens to have not been involved, but can't pull the strings to get out.
Astute Summation of China (Score:5, Insightful)
I second this. I spend a good portion of graduate school in Beijing and Manchuria, and you hit the nail on the head. The only people who will pay the price for pollution are the dumb schmucks whose guanxi is not powerful enough to shield them from scapegoating.
Re:A whole lot of crimes need stiffer sentences (Score:5, Insightful)
Holy bad example, Batman! A guy who robs a liquor store for $100 doesn't get 20 years for stealing $100. He gets 20 years for pointing a gun at the liquor store attendant and threatening his life for personal gain. Possibly as a repeat offender.
What a lot of commenters don't seem to get is that the sort of pollution that hardcore offenders engage in over there often results in human deaths. So the potential for punishment is merely being brought in line with the crime. You won't deter serious polluters with a fine.
That said, sure, many crimes are not proportional to their sentences. No news here. While we're making improbable demands, i think the act of spitting chewing gum on the street or sidewalk should be treated as vandalism, and enforced accordingly.
Re:Good? More like "Good Luck" (Score:5, Insightful)
Connected with who in the PRC?
China is not immune to politics. Being aligned with the wrong person at the wrong time, you can end up being made a high profile example.
Re:Good? More like "Good Luck" (Score:3, Insightful)
Great, another factual anti-china post.
Hey, has anyone went to jail for that Financial meltdown yet? Hopefully their connections did not come into play.
Re:Good? More like "Good Luck" (Score:5, Insightful)
China is not immune to politics. Being aligned with the wrong person at the wrong time, you can end up being made a high profile example.
Exactly. This is the whole point of the legislation. Now they can use "pollution" as an excuse to purge political enemies, while claiming to be "tough" on the environment.
Excessively harsh penalties tend to be counter-productive because they are almost never carried out, thus resulting in a culture of impunity. A $5 fine for littering would be far more effective.
Re:Good (Score:2, Insightful)
I am so disgusted with the immense amounts of waste we make - right here in the "good ole' USA". I find it amazing the world tolerates us. It seems all we do is consume and print our way our of our debt. I guess ( speaking as an unemployed engineer ), I am so pissed off that I try to make something that refrigerates more efficiently or lights a room better and I have no end of problems with the "people skills" needed to even get past the corporate firewall known as the "personnel department". I do not have the "certs" on some special language or CAD system they are looking for. They could seem to care less that I have a lifetime of experience working with the physics and thermodynamics of these things. Yet I see everyone fawning over some new fashion trend, sports hero, or teen idol.
It annoys me greatly to see us buying all sorts of stuff, shoddily made, but looks pretty in its packaging, just for a one-time use to show off that we can afford it.
I just about cried when I discovered during the oil crunch, my government was buying up "guzzler" SUV's and pouring sodium silicate in the engine to completely ruin it. These were still perfectly usable vehicles but our way, way, way overfunded governments can afford such waste. They did it to remove the chance some less fortunate individuals who did not drive much could buy them, keeping the prices high for retailers at taxpayer expense.
Then, after paying out their taxpayer money to buy up existing serviceable vehicles just to dry up the supply of used vehicles to keep poor people from having any, then the governor appears on TV appealing for yet more sales taxes to support our educational system - and no one has the guts to tell the politicians that they had the money and they irresponsibly spent it and the funding for the schools will be deducted from the retirement/healthcare costs of the politicians who backed up the irresponsible spending ( in lieu of jail time for abrogation of fiduciary duty on public funds ).
And we think the Chinese are bad? I think we are worse, much worse, but conniving.