A growth stream, or a way to get filthy rich?

1.  Unveiled earlier this month, the China Water Pollution Map shows for the first time how the country's breakneck economic development is wreaking havoc on its rivers, lakes and underground drinking supplies.

2.  Such an airing of China's dirty laundry - using government data - would have been unthinkable even five years ago.

3.  International environmental agencies say the outside world must also take responsibility for China's environmental crisis. Many of the polluting factories sell their cheap goods to richer nations. Part of the desertification problem is caused by global warming. Wasteful consumption is largely a consequence of rushing to follow a western lifestyle. And relative to its huge population, China is far less of an environmental villain than the United States or Europe.

http://society.guardian.co.uk/givinglist/story/0,,1938750,00.html