DRINKING IN DEMOCRACY
This week President Obama signed an historic environmental agreement with China. The
measure calls for the United States to reduce carbon emissions by 26-28 percent by 2025 and for
China to substantially reduce its emissions by 2030. China is currently the biggest emitter of
carbon pollution with the United States a close second.
I just returned from a trip to Henan University in central China. The first thing I did upon landing
at Dulles International Airport was to take a long, luxurious drink from the first public drinking
fountain I saw. And then fell on my knees with gratitude. America has free, clean, and available
water to drink. We have clean air to breathe. I have never loved my country so much.
Flying from Washington over the pole to China, I looked down at an arctic circle that was clear
and pristine but strikingly bare of ice. Shouldn’t this be completely white in November, I
wondered? Entering China airspace, the world below was shrouded by an orange-tinted smog
that continued all the way to Beijing. Another hazy flight from Beijing to the Henan Province
and we were on the ground heading for Kaifeng. The world outside the window of our Buick
minivan was shrouded in orangey fog that obscured infinite building projects strewn from
Zhengzhou to Kaifeng. Large concrete half structures pierced by rebar, load bearing highway
columns marched in twos across fields, large steel power poles in single file, and a nuclear power
plant here and there. A 21st century industrial revolution.
Stepping out of the hotel first morning in Kaifeng, I noticed an acidic smokiness in the air, like a
mild tear gas that irritated eyes, nose, throat, and lungs. We have all run into bad air—be it a
nearby skunk, a large fire, a gas leak—human or otherwise. But it’s temporary. We pinch our
noses, hold our breath, and run into the next room or down the block. The realization that this IS
the air, that there is nowhere to run, that you will be breathing this for the next week, for your
whole life, was sobering to the say the least. You can’t leave the bad air place and go somewhere
else. Masked cyclists rode by nonchalantly and some pedestrians as well, as if to say, it’s
perfectly normal not to be able to breathe. Two days in, my lungs were heavy and tight.
Water is readily available in plastic bottles and in the form of hot tea, with its infinite fragrant
and medicinal varieties and still practiced ancient rituals. Even restaurants serve water warm
(just boiled) in water glasses with your meal. But don’t drink it from the tap. Don’t wash your
toothbrush in it. Don’t open your mouth in the shower. Beware of wet restaurant plates.
These basics that we take for granted—to breathe air and to drink water. These are not basics in
China. I’ve traveled in many countries that lack potable water. Each time, I appreciate the United
States in a new way. What we think of as a basic human right is, for the Chinese, simply not
reality. Clean water is not available, and clean air is no longer the norm.
China is in the middle of an industrial revolution akin to that of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century in western countries. Perhaps it is temporary. We have gone through periods
where our lands and rivers and air were dangerously polluted. And we remain far from perfect.
Fast train to Beijing is smooth, quiet, and efficient. Better by far than any U.S. train. But the
smog continues to shroud the continuous building projects that overlay a recently rural and
bucolic landscape. Eurasian magpie nests are strung like beads over what are now highways,
nestled in power poles rather than trees. The strange collision of farm fields, rebar, and concrete
continues the whole way. Some miles outside of Beijing, the air begins to clear. And indeed,
stepping out of the Beijing train station, we are met with a visible full moon and even a few stars
in the sky. The air is almost normal! Wasn’t Beijing supposed to have some of the worst smog in
China? The answer comes from a BBC news report at the hotel. The Chinese have closed all the
factories in a fifty mile radius of Beijing, taken half the cars off the road, and even are forcing a
nearby town to go without heat for a week. Putin and Obama are arriving in a few days for the
APEC summit! Next day people are out in droves, walking and bicycling, masks off. And we get
to stroll around the Forbidden City below an almost blue sky. But shouldn’t the world leaders
arriving in Beijing see what it’s really like? Wouldn’t it be great if our leaders saw what life is
without environmental regulation? This is a chance to breathe the truth!
After a couple of weeks in China, I find myself seeing drinking fountains in public buildings, in
airports and schools, as allegories of our democracy. We the people. Like our pristine public
lands, our clean water is the legacy of a country with ideals for both individual freedoms and a
common and shared good. These two notions are not mutually exclusive; they are mutually
dependent. Walk into the wilderness. Take a deep breath. Stand up to your knees in clear water
with a fishing pole. Look across the grand canyon or the grand Tetons, Yellowstone, Yosemite,
Zion, or Glacier. Hike in an ancient wood with your child. Stop at a small stream for a cool
drink. Put your mouth under the faucet. Take a deep breath. This is freedom. This is democracy.
I see again how precious it really is.
Yes, I am idealizing a bit. We are, after all, right behind China as world polluters. We are
wasteful. Our bees our endangered. We’re lopping off mountaintops, and blasting chemicals
beneath the earth that endanger the water table. We have to continuously safeguard our land, air,
and waters. And we have to take responsibility for our own carbon outputs and our consumption
of Chinese products. We have to do this because we know it’s the right thing. We know it’s the
good thing to do. And we know that our land belongs to our children.
Back in the U.S., I take a deep breath and head home. At home I stick my mouth under the
kitchen faucet and take a long drink. Ah, free to breathe, free to drink, free to be. What a
country!
Paula Crawford is an Associate Professor at George Mason University and a Woodrow Wilson
Visiting Fellow.
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