What burdens does China's increasing energy use put on the environment?

it adds massive amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, as well as many other pollutants

It affects the environment very badly because china doesnt use many nuclear reactors or natural sources of energy very much but coal is used so it burns which gives out sulphur dioxide 9Acid rain and Co2 global warming). Also more dangerous than china or coal etc are cow which produce methane which is far worse than co2. and china has millions of cows.

China uses massive amounts of coal, which is the absolutely most polluting form of energy that you can find this side of a nuclear meltdown (even that can be argued).

They just burn it with no scrubbers, and their plants are some of the most inefficient in the world, meaning that they need many times more coal than a modern plant, and thus many times more pollutants.

You get sulfur dioxides (SO2), carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO) and various nitric oxide (NOx).  Not to mention massive amounts of soot that sometimes makes the sky over China look like evening or even night.

Carbon dioxide is a "greenhouse gas," sulfur dioxide is unhealthy and ironically a "global cooler."  Carbon monoxide we all know is toxic, and you don't want to be breathing in a whole bunch of nitric compounds, either.

Then you have acid rain.  When these compounds mix with water, you get sulfuric acid, carbonic acid, and nitric acid.  This kills plants, poisons water, contaminates soil, and to our human structures, dissolves them away right before our eyes (look at the gargoyles and structures made of blocks of rock from centuries  past, like Notre Dame).

Now you go back in time to where this particular coal cycle began on this particular day in China.  Mining coal is *very* bad for the environment, particularly the way that China does it, entirely without any regard for safety of the environment (or workers).  Habitats are destroyed by a number of methods, ground and surface water is contaminated with particles and chemicals.  Soot gets into the air.  

Now you have to transport it, which means trains.  This means more habitat destruction laying rail (and as secondary things, like the iron and industry that goes into building trains).  It means polluting the air by running huge diesel engines to drag the trains from place to place.

China has no worry about even changing, either.  It's cheap for them, they don't give a damn about anything but becoming an economic powerhouse.  This includes human life, if I can just editorialize.  They have managed to sneak into the UN's and Montreal Protocols with "developing nation" status (along with India), meaning that there are no limits on greenhouse gas or other pollutant reduction or cap.  They have no incentive to change their ways.

It's also because of this that the US is not a signatory to the Protocol.  If you're into an economic wrestling match and the other guy isn't playing with rules, then there's no reason to tie your own hand behind your back just to look good knowing that you're going to lose.  If the US signed on, capping our own industry would cost so much money that it would set us back by years or decades.

Anyway, I got off track.

That's why China's increasing energy use has a severe environmental impact.

Increasing CO2 levels worsening the greenhouse effect