Climate Change

Climate change is easily the most frustrating thing we have studied so far.  It seems like everyone but a few denialists knows that its happening, but nobody is really willing to do anything substantial to fix it.  I recently sat through a really well done presentation in my PRC class about China and the environment, and many of the things he talked have been reflected on in our class.  He talked about the social injustices of the sustainability movement with the exportation of plastic recycling to China from the United States, he talked about the Cancer Cities that have sprung up around the high tech regions, and he talked about water pollution and land degradation in the name of progress.
None of these are new issues (with the possible exception of the cancer cities) yet the Chinese government has not done anything concrete to change it.  Our presenter listed several plans that the Chinese had, and then told us that none of this plans are really able to be enforced in China, the government values expansion and growth of environmental sustainability.
This seems to be like an extreme example of the world's opinions and actions in general.  Everyone pays lip service to the environment then passes laws with enough loopholes to be a pretty goof fishing net.  Not that you'd want to eat any of the fish you could catch in 7 of China's main 9 lakes.