Cher Has Figured Out How to Fix the Planet

Take a virtual-reality tour of China’s environmental catastrophe, hosted by the pop diva.


Photo illustration: Debby Wong/Shutterstock; Imaginechina via AP

As anyone who follows her incomparable, emoji-drenched Twitter rants will know, Cher isn’t afraid to speak her mind. For example, the unapologetic diva blasted President Barack Obama for not doing enough to ease fears about ISIS in his Sunday night prime-time address. She is also in a long-running Twitter war with Donald Trump. Follow her. It’s the best thing you’ll do today.

Now, Cher is lending her famous voice to the fight for a better, cleaner world, in an innovative virtual-reality tour of China’s environmental emergency published by the Sierra Club on Monday. Throughout the short video, Cher explains how China has become the world’s leading emitter of carbon dioxide, and how putrid air filled with poisonous sulfur leads to 4,000 premature deaths every day in China (true), and two birth defects every minute (also true, but a pretty old statistic at this point). In addition to that, pollution from China’s environmental crisis travels outside the country’s borders, to Japan and farther afield, all the way to the United States—something we’ve reported on before. While you watch the video, use your mouse to grab the screen and swivel it around for a complete 360-degree view of the polluted Chinese countryside:

There are, however, some factual issues with the Sierra Club’s video about China. The environmental group says Chinese companies deliberately manipulated official energy figures to hide a massive 17 percent gap in coal-burning data. That’s a figure that was widely reported after the New York Times published an article in November that said, “The increase alone is greater than the whole German economy emits annually from fossil fuels.” But to be clear, there is no evidence to suggest that Chinese companies, or even the government, hid or fiddled with data in a nefarious way. The explanation, it seems, is far more boring: an official revision of energy statistics that took into account more information. As I reported at the time, energy experts at prominent environmental organizations, as well as United Nations officials, have long been aware of the revisions, and the news hasn’t affected what we know about the long-term trajectory of China’s emissions. (I’ve reached out to the Sierra Club for clarification on this point.)

The video does paint a devastating picture of China’s so-called “air-pocalypse,” the cloud of particulate matter spewed from coal-burning power plants and car tailpipes that blankets many Chinese cities for much of the year, especially in winter when heaters are turned on. “Walking through Beijing was like strolling through a coal mine,” wrote New York Times China correspondent Edward Wong on Wednesday. As the high-stakes Paris climate talks continue this week, Beijing officials issued the first-ever “red” alert for the city since a new health warning system was instituted in 2013, meaning schools and factories were shuttered, and cars were forced off the road.

While confronting the emergency at home, Chinese leaders are taking a leadership role in the Paris talks, having already pledged the creation of a national carbon emissions trading system by 2017. In addition, China forged a historic deal with the United States to begin curbing emissions. The country has also ramped up clean energy production by an astonishing amount, eclipsing US efforts.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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