A good piece in today’s Post on how concerns over pollution in China are boiling over, sometimes led by local officials standing up to their superiors. Environmentalism was also the first crack in the Soviet edifice, as people began to speak out about the poisoning of Lake Baikal, the Aral Sea, Lake Sevan, and elsewhere, since they were initially able to present it as a safe, non-political, quality of life issue. But what really got my attention was the unauthorized organization started by village leaders: “Leading Group of 100,000 People Living Along the Qingshui River Protecting Our People’s River.” The acronym would be unmanageable in English, but it’s probably just three characters in Chinese!