Smog Police: New Beijing Force Created To Tackle Air Pollution

[Calista241]

Source: NPR

Beijing is launching a new police force aimed at tackling its persistent smog problem.

This comes after a month of particularly severe air quality that left the capital and dozens of other Chinese cities blanketed in thick, brown smog.

The city's acting mayor, Cai Qi, announced over the weekend that the new environmental police force will crack down on polluters such as "open-air barbeques, garbage incineration, biomass burning, [and] dust from roads," according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. He didn't offer any more specifics about the squad.

Cai also announced other measures to tackle the persistent problem, including closing the city's only coal-fired plant. In 2017, "coal consumption will be cut by 30 percent to less than 7 million tonnes" and "another 300,000 high-polluting old vehicles will be phased out," the news agency reports.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/09/508965737/smog-police-new-beijing-force-created-to-tackle-air-pollution

[Warpy]

1. This time lapse video came in recently

It wasn't quite this bad during the years people had coal fired central heat in US cities, but almost. I look at that sickly yellowish grey color of the cloud and I can still smell it. Throw in a local steel mill and a temperature inversion, and the cloud that was always over the city came down to ground level.

I don't know how they stand it, just a day or two and my eyes and throat would be on fire when I was a kid.

[Calista241]

2. Damn. That's amazing. n/t

[Dustlawyer]

3. Until the winds come and spread it out to the rest of the world!