Activism

Between 400 and 500 protestors took to the streets of a provincial capital to protest a multibillion-dollar petrochemical plant backed by China’s leading state-run oil company, in the latest instance of popular discontent over an environmental threat in a major city.

The protest, against a $5.5 billion ethylene plant under construction by PetroChina reflected a surge in environmental awareness by urban, middle-class Chinese determined to protect their health and the value of their property. A similar protest last year, against a Taiwanese-financed petrochemical venture left that project in limbo.

The recent protest, which was peaceful, was organized through Web sites, blogs and cellphone text messages, illustrating how some Chinese are using digital technology to start civic movements, which are usually banned by the police. Organizers also used text messages to publicize their cause nationally.

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Greenpeace and more than 100 other environmental groups have denounced projects for burying industrial greenhouse gases, exposing splits in the green movement about whether such schemes can slow global warming.

Many governments and some environmental organizations such as the WWF want companies to capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the exhausts of power plants and factories and then entomb them in porous rocks as one way to curb climate change.

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The company at the centre of an environmental debacle that killed hundreds of ducks at an oil sands tailings pond north of Fort McMurray has taken out full-page newspaper advertisements apologizing for the incident.

The open-letter style ad comes less than a week after reports of birds seen on a toxic waste water pond at the company's Aurora mine site.

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