Toxic Toys
Mattel is recalling 19,000,000 of them—all made in China.
(By the way, for a massive recall, the Mattel site is pretty darn quiet about it—try to find the announcement of the recall on their site. Then look at the two-page single-spaced press release, and think about how useful that's going to be for most people. Way to handle the situation, Mattel.)
This is going to start a wave of toy recalls; Mattel is surely not the only one.
In other China news, they've been exporting baby bibs made with lead.
Meanwhile, the number of "super-rich" in China is growing exponentially.
Let me clarify something: A couple of you have wondered if I have something against China. Not so. But China's newfound international power creates a historically unique and alarming situation: The rise of a superpower in a globalized age which also happens to be the world's most populous nation—but, in part due to its undemocratic system of government, lacks the regulatory infrastructure to monitor the safety of its exports or tamp down the excesses of its imports, such as shark fins. The consequences are being felt around the world—from the development of impoverished African nations, pollution of the entire world*, possibly sick children in the US and elsewhere, extinction of sharks around the world, and countless other ways.
And these phenomena stemming from China's massive impact on the world are also happening extremely fast—sharks, , for example, could be extinct within five to ten years.
So we're at a fascinating moment here, and it seems worth paying attention to—and yes, on occasion, raising an alarm about.
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From the New York Times:
Unless China finds a way to clean up its coal plants and the thousands of factories that burn coal, pollution will soar both at home and abroad. The increase in global-warming gases from China's coal use will probably exceed that for all industrialized countries combined over the next 25 years, surpassing by five times the reduction in such emissions that the Kyoto Protocol seeks.
