Firemen work at the site of a chemical leak in an abandoned paper factory in Yangji village in Puyang city in China's Henan province on Oct. 14, 2010. (Liu Jinkuan/Color China Photo/AP Images)
“In China’s thousands of years of civilization, the conflict between humankind and nature has never been as serious as it is today.”
— ZHOU SHENGXIAN, China’s environment minister, in a statement published on his agency’s web site, stating that China’s growth will be hindered if its environmental problems are not brought under control (via New York Times)