Beijingers Will Need Their Masks. There Are No More 'Clean Air' Days

[callady]

Beijingers will need their masks. There are no more 'clean air' days

By David Eimer in Beijing

Published: 19 October 2005

The imminent arrival of winter in Beijing doesn't just ensure minus 10C temperatures and a bitter wind that roars in from Siberia via Mongolia. It means one of the world's most polluted cities will become even more dangerous for its residents as the thousands of coal-fired furnaces that heat the city's apartment blocks, as well as thousands more coal-burning domestic stoves, start sending sulphur dioxide into an atmosphere already filthy from the pollutants spewed out by hundreds of factories and millions of car exhausts.

As China grows by leaps and bounds, the ugly-side effects of Chinese-style socialism, as economic development is euphemistically called, are on constant view in the capital. Each year, Beijing's Municipal Environment Protection Bureau sets a target of clean air days, 227 last year, and each year the city fails to achieve its goal. For Beijingers, that means that not only are the Fragrant Hills on the western outskirts of the city often obscured by a foul, grey pollution haze, but it can be difficult to make out buildings a few hundred yards away. On the worst days, you can taste the pollution in your mouth and asthma sufferers and those at risk from respiratory diseases are told to stay inside.

Last week, the Bureau acknowledged that pollution will only get worse. "Looking at the changing trend in Beijing's weather over the past few winters, the situation isn't very promising," said Du Shaozhong, the vice-director of the Bureau. There have been 190 clean air days in Beijing this year, but the arrival of winter means there won't be many more. An emergency plan will go into effect if, as expected, there is heavy air pollution for two consecutive days. Factories with high levels of emissions will be ordered to cut production, street cleaners will deploy and trucks will trundle through the streets spraying water to damp down the dust that swirls through the air on a daily basis.

But it's the trucks with dodgy exhausts that help make Beijing such a polluted place. Along with the 2.5 million cars, a number increasing by a 1,000 a day as the middle classes turn their backs on bicycles and a public transport system that covers just a fraction of the city, it means many days when Beijingers wear masks.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article320566.ece

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

1. Great. Let's get some pneumonia and bronchitis

bacilli mixed in with the bird flu virus... ah, what a world.

[Lithos]

2. I know the economists may disagree with me

But China's future is not bright and shiny. There are going to be some serious repercussions with the health of the nation over this. Definitely robbing Peter to pay Paul, except Peter will demand more than a pound of flesh from cancer and other illnesses.

L-

[Psephos]

8. Part of the reason Chinese goods are so cheap...

...is that there are no added costs associated with green or environmentally-friendly manufacturing practices. The situation recalls the eco-disasters of the old Soviet Union. There are going to be some ugly clean-ups in China's future.

Peace.

[wickerwoman]

10. Yeah, there's a lot that doesn't add up.

China is going to be hit *hard* by upcoming rises in petroleum prices both directly (costs of gas, a/c, electricity and a country addicted to plastic) and indirectly (decline in exports as the cost of transportation increases.)

There was a National Geographic a while back about the pollution in the Western provinces. They showed a man who had the skin on his hands peeling off from washing them in the tapwater. It was totally disgusting.

The Chinese government's solution seems to be "move the factories to the outskirts of the cities" although that only effects the perception of pollution and "plant more trees". I've been dying to ask though what this will do to the water table in a country already on the verge of massive drought.

China has a very, very narrow line to walk if it plans to supplant the U.S. any time in the future.

[callady]

11. Industrialism whatever name you give it

is the same in all meaningful ways. Call it the technological era, capitalism, socialism etc. it all commodifies, requires unbridled growth, mass production and copious amounts of energy. A political smokescreen is required to hide the reality, call it democracy if you wish. This leads to planetary meltdown.


The China Crisis

Spectacular growth now biggest threat to environment

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor

Published: 19 October 2005


Western politicians queue up to sing its praises. Economists regard it with awe and delight. Other countries are desperate to imitate it. Yet there is another side to China's exploding, double-digit-growth miracle economy - it is turning into one of the greatest environmental threats the earth has ever faced.

An ominous sign of the danger is given in a groundbreaking report from Greenpeace, published today, which maintains that China is now by far the world's biggest driver of rainforest destruction. The report documents the vast deforestation driven by the soaring demands of China's enormous timber trade - the world's largest - as the country's headlong economic development sucks in ever-more amounts of the earth's natural resources.

Citing figures from the International Tropical Timber Organisation, the Greenpeace study says that nearly five out of every 10 tropical hardwood logs shipped from the world's threatened rainforests are now heading for China - more than to any other destination.

<snip>

Because of their increasing reliance on coal-fired power stations to provide their energy, the Chinese are firmly on course to overtake the Americans as the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, and thus become the biggest contributors to global warming and the destabilisation of the climate. If they remain uncontrolled, the growth of China's carbon dioxide emissions over the next 20 years will dwarf any cuts in CO2 that the rest of the world can make.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article320565....

[jayctravis]

3. They need to be smart with the largest population.

They are going to have the highest instance of communicated bacteria. We have the same problems in large cities.

A mask might not cut chances of contracting a virus completely, but I'm sure it's enough of a hedge to be a good choice.

[slay]

4. We MUST get pollution under control

before it kills us all. :(

[ecoalex]

5. They are the Neo Con Model

Breathe Deeply the Republicans Care About You.

[Psephos]

9. Just a thought....

...but neocons are not modeled upon communists. Quite the opposite, actually, as a true neocon is a former leftist who has gone apostate.

Still, I get your drift. :-)

Peace.

[DBoon]

6. Sounds like we've outsourced our pollution to China

along with our manufacturing

[HereSince1628]

14. In many cases that bordered on intentional

American industry has been bitching about regulation's impact on profits since the beginning of the clean air act.

When given the chance the CEOs moved their companies to places without regulation and no direct costs for environmental mediations.

Not to say all companies did that, but many did. Until the countries hosting these companies develop effective environmental regulation their people's health will suffer and the US industry is put at a competitive disadvantage.

[Gregorian]

7. And so it has begun...

Farewell bicycles. And ice caps.

Petroleum- more addictive than heroin.

[OzarkDem]

12. Breast cancer rates increase nearly 40%

and much of the increase is in younger women - a group whose breast cancer incidence isn't linked to dietary or obesity risk (of course the Chinese government is telling them otherwise).

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-10/05/content_482686.htm

[LostinVA]

13. Aren't the next Summer Olympics supposed to be held here?

I thought it seemed weird when they were chosen to host, because of this very reason.

[Boo Boo]

15. I watched an F1 race in China on the Tele the other night, and

man was it nasty. There was haze in the air that almost looked like fog. I watched it for a few minutes, not knowing where the race was, and was so blown away by the air polution that I finally looked it up and saw it was China.

It's brutal.