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Walden is, among other things, a book about time. According to Thoreau, time has been hijacked by modernity, where technological advances such as the railroad and the telegraph have sped up life at an inhuman rate. But, from our author's perspective, we've gotten to a point where these technologies are no longer tools. Instead of us running the machines, the machines are running us. No matter how hard we work, we can never keep pace, let alone pause to think about what we're doing.
Thoreau wants us all to slow down and reconnect with real time, Nature's time. By slowing down, we give ourselves some space to think about our values and the direction this fast-paced life is taking us. Thoreau wants to take the future back from the machines and return it to human hands.
IV. China's Ecological Environment
Thoreau taught us to love nature, to treat nature as our closest friend and to live with nature with our genuine care. It’s his long appeal that we should come back to wild nature and embrace it. While studying his thoughts on nature, I can’t help reflecting on our own motherland, China. China’s economy, already huge, is growing at a fast speed. However, its environmental problems are more severe than those of other major countries, and are worsening.
1. Air pollution
In January, 2013, there were 19 days when the index in Beijing outnumbered that 300 threshold, according to the Washington Post, and readings above 500 are not unusual any longer. On Jan. 12, 2013, the reading reached a shocking 886. Most experts blame the coal-burning electrical plants. 47% of the world’s coal is used in China, similar to the amount used by all other countries combined. And around Beijing are numbers of coal-burning power plants.
The air quality of Beijing isn't the worst in China. The air quality of Ürümqi, in West China, is the worst. Other Chinese cities such as Linfen, Lanzhou, are also on lists of the world's most polluted places.
2. Water pollution
Over 50% of China's surface water is so polluted that it can’t be treated to be drinkable, and one-quarter of it is so dangerous that can't even be used for industrial purposes.
Groundwater is not satisfactory either: About 40 percent of China's farmland depends on underground water resource for irrigation, and around 90 percent is polluted, Reuters reports. Around 60 percent of the groundwater in Chinese cities is considered as "severely polluted".
3. Desertification
China once had a long history of intensive agriculture, so it is not surprising that much of the nation's 3.7 million square-mile (9.6 million square kilometers) territory has been subject to deforestation. Forests turning into farmland, population growth, and some infrastructure projects have placed China's remaining forests at danger. United Nations Environment Programme lists Chinese forests as threatened and in need of conservation.
About one-quarter of the country’s total land is now under desertification. In spite of recent gains in reforestation and grasslands restoration, the desert continues expanding every year by approximately 950 square miles (2,460 sq km), according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). As a result of heavy loss of arable land, a generation of "eco-migrants" has been created. The eco-migrants generation are those who can not keep their traditional agricultural lifestyle and are forced to leave their homelands.
4. Biodiversity
Habitat loss and decrease in biodiversity also arouse our concerns. With large areas of forest stripped for farmland, plantations, endangered animals such as pandas, struggle to survive. In addition, Chinese market is the primary source for rhinos’ horns, elephants' ivory, and tigers’ bones (as medicine) and penises (as aphrodisiacs). This huge demand only put endangered animals at more risk.