The damage that China's double-digit GDP growth is doing to the environment

The outcome of the debate is important for the course of a country that will soon overtake the United States as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and where hundreds of millions of people have no access to clear drinking water. A year ago, the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) jointly released China's first green GDP report, estimating the cost of pollution in 2004 at 3.05 percent of gross domestic product.