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Schoolchildren ordered indoors as air pollution cloaks Shanghai
- ck2 13y agoUnbelievable http://i.imgur.com/lef99jm.jpg http://i.imgur.com/lef99jm.jpg Has to take years off your life to be breathing that.
- deletes 13y agoThat photo just gave me a great idea for the next Bioshock game.
- fdej 13y agoI don't know, the color palette seems to be from Quake.
- Guillaume86 13y agoWhat's surprising is Shanghai's life expectancy being really hight (over 82). Would like to have someone with some knowledge about the subject expand a bit on the pollution/life expectancy/statictics subject (there will be consequences later? etc)
- voidlogic 13y agoPeople who are 82 now spent most of there life living in the city before it got very bad. The real question is if people born there now will see 82...
- Guillaume86 13y agoI know but my wild guess would be that the tendency should start to show up in stats given the pollution already started years ago (?)
- johnzim 13y agoIt's a good guess but we probably won't see the impact for a a little while. Before Deng's reforms in the 80s industry was limited and the growth in the past 10 years has been incredible. My own grandfather's health was only really significantly affected by the pollution floating over to HK in the past 3-5 years. I'd say wait another 10 years before the true consequences start to become apparent.
- Guillaume86 13y agoThanks for the information
- yk 13y agoThe sky above the port was the color of a TV, switched to a dead channel.
- k2enemy 13y agoIt is kind of funny that future generations may interpret that opening to mean a clear blue sky.
- duskwuff 13y ago"The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel." - Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
- akx 13y agohttp://lowlightmixes.blogspot.fi/2011/02/television-sky.html http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.fi/2011/02/television-sky.html
- mortenjorck 13y agoThere's always Beijing: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--W3r4NvkHFg/UPpFQzRcNWI/AAAAAAAACBA/WKYACvJJyvM/s1600/tumblr_mgn3ngzM7y1qzprlbo1_1280.png http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--W3r4NvkHFg/UPpFQzRcNWI/AAAAAAAACB...
- babesh 13y agoLooks like a shot from Blade Runner.
- biesnecker 13y agoSad. I love -- _love_ -- that city, but I could never live there again, not breathing that.
- matthewrudy 13y agoand the price of international schools for your kids, right?
- davepage 13y agoIf cost is a primary concern, the kids can go to local school (just like Chinese kids who come to the US). The expat continuum goes from 'bubble' to 'going native'. Bubble is most expensive. Might as well stay home, no?
- thaumasiotes 13y agoThey can? Even local chinese kids without 户口 can't go to local schools, to hear them tell it. That was one of the primary reasons students came to the school where I worked in 2010-11.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoYou'll have to pay some bribes but its possible. Generally, expats with kids have packages that include private schooling. Expats without packages usually have to leave when they get kids, though that's probably for the better with this air (the better private schools have huge bubbles, by the way....)
- davepage 13y agoNo first hand experience, but from what I can tell, children of legitimate Z visa holders can send their kids to local schools for a reasonable fee. See shanghaiexpat. It is also legal for expats to home school their kids (not legal for the locals). There is a strong sense of entitlement present in American culture which leads to unrealistic expectations when living abroad. This manifests as the so-called 'ugly American'. China is a place where 'zero-tolerance' is literally a foreign concept, and anything is possible with persistence (and good connections). Which also implies the downside -- nothing is permanent or guaranteed, either.
- JonSkeptic 13y agoI've seen sci-fi depictions of over-industrialized mega-city scapes, but I never thought I'd actually get to see a picture of one. To call that surreal is an understatement.
- nabla9 13y agosci-fi? It's more like reminder from the history. Rapid industrialization and increase in living standards seems to follow familiar pattern. Great Smog of London documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkx-2mT1-q4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkx-2mT1-q4
- aspensmonster 13y agoI guess we didn't have to wait until November 2019. But at least we have "cheap" consumer goods!
- icebraining 13y agoAnd Chinese workers have stuff like food. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China#Poverty_reduction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China#Poverty_reduct...
- Houshalter 13y agoWe could just give people food without having to make stuff for us in return. The world does not have a food shortage.
- Symmetry 13y agoMeanwhile, in the political system we live in, most Americans think that a balanced budget should be achieved by cutting foreign aid. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/09/americans-want-to-balance_n_531671.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/09/americans-want-to-b... "Market exchange is a pathetically inadequate substitute for love, but it scales better."
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- javindo 13y agoSuch a shame; an amazing city with wonderful prospects, becoming almost entirely uninhabitable.
- JonFish85 13y agoWhat? But China ratified the Kyoto protocol and pledged to reduce their pollution. This can't be true! It's almost as if the country completely disregarded the treaty to grow their economy at any expense.
- Symmetry 13y agoThe Kyoto protocol has to do with CO2 emissions, which are very different from the sort of particulate and sulfur pollution described in the article. Also, I have no idea whether China is actually following that treaty, but the reason the US didn't sign was that it did actually allow China to drastically increase the amount of fossil fuels it burns.
- danielweber 13y agoYes, China and India are considered "developing" countries by Kyoto and can produce all the CO2 they want under the treaty, so of course they signed it. EDIT: and, of course, it was about CO2, not particulates. A country can make certain trade-offs about different types of pollution (particulates v. CO2 v. NOX).
- _delirium 13y agoThat part doesn't seem too unfair to me, considering that China and India's per-capita emissions are still vastly below U.S. levels. It'd be one thing if they were being allowed higher-than-US-level emissions due to being classified as "developing" countries, but they aren't producing anywhere near that.
- ams6110 13y agoIt's the total emissions that matter, not per capita, and China leads the world.
- _delirium 13y agoThat's a silly metric, though, because it just depends on where you divide things up politically. If China split into two independent countries, suddenly it wouldn't lead the world anymore, but the environment would not be any better off. Similarly, if Europe merged into a United States of Europe, its emissions would be much higher-ranked (maybe the largest), but it would not actually emit more than currently. The environment does not care at what scale you draw your political borders. Per-capita emissions are one way of accounting for the obvious fact that if Denmark (a nation of 5 million people) generated as much CO2 per year as Germany does (a nation of 80 million people), Denmark would in this hypothetical be more blameworthy, and it would be fair to ask Denmark to reduce its emissions more than Germany, as it would already be emitting far out of proportion to its size. Put differently, if every country reduced their per-capita emissions to China's level, we'd actually be in great shape. That suggests that China is not the main problem.
- dlundqvist 13y agoYeah, today was not a great day to be here. We contemplated not letting our children go outside, but eventually sent them to school.
- nicholassmith 13y agoI know someone over in China at the moment and they said that the pollution was so bad this morning that looking out of a window you couldn't see the building next it. Scary thought of how much damage that'd do to your lungs.
- tcas 13y agoThe air pollution levels are similar to living an airport smoking lounge. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-30/beijing-air-akin-to-living-in-smoking-lounge-chart-of-the-day.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-30/beijing-air-akin-to...
- Nav_Panel 13y agoEDIT: apparently my post below was predicated on a false assumption, please disregard. That's Beijing, not Shanghai, and I think we can assume that Beijing is at least slightly cleaner than Shanghai, if not by much. According this article[0], Shanghai's level reached 602.5, which, when compared to the data on the graph you linked, is about 75 points higher than Beijing. [0]: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/smog-extremely-hazardous-levels-shanghai-21120221 http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/smog-extremely...
- user1713952 13y agoAccording to the data from this page: http://kopf.github.io/chineseair/ http://kopf.github.io/chineseair/ Beijing seems to typically have higher pollution levels than Shanghai.
- rollo_tommasi 13y agoBeijing is generally worse more often, partly because they get hit by dust carried from the increasingly large Gobi Desert in addition to all the man-made pollution.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
- matthewrudy 13y agoI love China but pollution, the great firewall, and visa complications make it less attractive as somewhere to live.
- thaumasiotes 13y agoSpeaking as someone who lives in China... The firewall won't bother you (assuming you wish to get around it); it's there for the masses. Any idiot with a US citizenship can get a tourist visa, lasting a year and having only the requirement "visit Hong Kong (or any other non-China location) every three months" (I was unambitious, and got a two-month one). Someone of my acquaintance says he paid a visa-help company $1000 and got a business visa, good for a year and imposing no requirements. I have, in the past, had a working visa; if that's what you want, it's generally done by your employer, not you. Your "I love China" kind of leads me to believe you'd be familiar with this already... what kind of complications have you experienced?
- davepage 13y ago$1000! Crazy laowai. As a data point, my current F visa is 2 years, multi-entry, 90 days and cost the nominal fee plus about $100 for the visa company to drop it off at the consulate. Apparently, the F visa has been re-purposed and there is a new M business visa. Any practical experience with that? [of course, China habitually hassles journalists (Bloomberg) over visas]
- da02 13y agoWhat's the name (or link) of the visa company?
- makmanalp 13y agoAlso curious ...
- davepage 13y agoBusiness visa Requirements: 1. One completely filled out “Visa Application Form, which you can down load from my attached PDF file. It needs to type with computer then print out. Don’t leave any blank, write “N/A” in any item which not suit for you. 2. One recently taken 2X2 in. photo showing entire face and without a hat on. Please affix the photo to the application form. Photo should be light background, and taken within 6 months. 3. Original passport with at least 2 blank visa pages and valid for at least 6 months beyond the date of application. 4. Invitation letter from the company or university in China 5. Your company or college in US's letter for proof. 6. Fee: Embassy: $140/per person for single, double & multiple entry in one year Service fee: $35.00 Postage: $22.00 for local people pick up by themselves, +$7.40 for others Total: $197.00 for local/ $204.40 for others. Make your check paid to: Chinese Service Center . Lucy Chinese Service Center of Greater Albany, LLC. 2394 Parkville Place Schenectady, NY 12309 Tel:(518)346-0555 Email:CSCAlbany@yahoo.com EDIT: formatting
- jkimmel 13y agoIs there a level of public outcry regarding the pollution? I realize that criticism may be somewhat muted given the nature of the PRC government, but I can't imagine a city as large and cosmopolitan as Shanghai merely accepting this level of environmental mismanagement. Unfortunately, articles regarding Beijing/Shanghai pollution usually fail to mention public sentiment above the level of brief individual anecdote ("It's hard to breath on the way to the office" - Chinese citizen, etc.). Perhaps someone local could provide some insight?
- dylandrop 13y agoI mean, the problem is that there's a bit of a cultural difference between Americans circa-Industrial Revolution, and the Chinese now. So saying that the Chinese will stand up and protest isn't necessarily true. I don't want to speak for all Chinese, but from what I've read -- please correct me if I'm wrong -- is that there is more of a culture of deference to authority in China. Compare this to Americans, who have a history and pride in rebelling against authority. Now, you might point to China's communist revolution, but realize that with this government came the need for them to propagandize and popularize a love and respect for the government in control, much more so than in the U.S. So back to my original point, protest culture isn't as much of a thing there as it is here, because there's more of a sense of working for the collective good (economic growth of China). So I'm hoping that there will by outcry, but I think it is unfortunately less likely than it would be in the U.S. due to Chinese culture. I'd also like to here some local insight as well, and I hope I'm proved wrong because it would be awesome if there was a public outcry.
- babesh 13y agoMy impression is that it has to do with Tiananmen Square (been there, tried that, didn't work) and being complicit in trading off economic advancement for maintaining Communist party rule. Also many government officials directly benefit from economic advancement via bribery/corruption.
- veidr 13y ago> being complicit in trading off economic advancement for maintaining Communist party rule. I think 'complicit' might be an overstatement here; it's not like you can just go vote for the Democrats in China right? I really doubt Barack Obama would be the American president today if the real penalties for advocating for the replacement of the Republican Party regime of 2000 had included death, life in a torture camp, similar things for your family, etc.
- mathattack 13y agoI remember visiting Shanghai about 10 years ago. It was very vibrant and exciting, and there were cranes everywhere. I thought, "This is like being on the ground floor of a great new metropolis. Wouldn't it be awesome to work here?" I'm glad that things didn't work out that way. There are health consequences for such massive pollution.
- squozzer 13y agoI'd engage in some schadenfreude, but a good bit of that stuff will be lurking over LA none too soon.
- rahimnathwani 13y agoI feel thankful to be in Beijing. The AQI (air quality index) is only 202 (very unhealthy) here right now.
- Sharlin 13y agoI wonder how this compares to the worst smogs experienced in London and elsewhere before the West got its act together with regard to particulate pollution. Apparently the Great Smog of 1952 killed on the order of 10000 people in just a few days. I'm not sure many young people nowadays realize how horrible the situation was just half a century ago. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_1952 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_1952
- brianbreslin 13y agoDo you guys think this will spur china to jump ahead in greening/pollution reduction? It would be incredibly costly to do so ($$$), but incredibly costly not to (people).
- Cthulhu_ 13y agoSo why do people use those flimsy face masks instead of proper gas masks / carbon filters?
- prawks 13y agoCost is a likely factor.
- autodidakto 13y agoSelf-administered placebo
- jread 13y agoI lived in Utah which can get very smoggy due to winter inversions. PM2.5 levels sometimes hit 80 mcg in the winter, often the highest in the country and utterly depressing to live in.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoIts a scandal when SLC hits 70 2.5PM, its just a bad day when Beijing hits 700 2.5PM. There is just no comparison.
- johnzim 13y agoI grew up in Hong Kong. It didn't have the cleanest air in the world but I lived in relative good health. After I left for university I heard things were getting worse and worse although I remained sceptical. When I returned for work, the air was nowhere near as bad as it is on the mainland now but I simply couldn't survive it. Every day my lungs constricted within minutes (I have asthma.) I realised I could never return to live in my home city as I had intended to. I was not angered by the existence of the pollution. Things change and China grows on the mainland. What I was angered by was the fact that after the handover, the government was so cowed by their new CCP masters that they wouldn't even tell the truth about the air pollution. You will never hear an HK official admit that the pollution comes from China, yet every single adult citizen who grew up in the city remembers what life was like 15-20 years ago. China ostensibly has anti-pollution laws. The CCP's colossal corruption keeps them from ever being enforced and entire cities, my hometown amongst them, are now literally poisonous to live in.
- wang0109 13y agoThere's a big "movement" by CCP to control this thing. It's mentioned in major party conferences. I heard there's going to be 10 Billion RMB poured into this, and pollution would be considered as evaluation parameter for "party leaders". However I seriously doubt most of the money will end up in vein or simply stolen. So "enforcement" is to happen but I have little trust in them.
- da02 13y agoWas it possible for you to breathe the air in the surrounding areas? (Lantau, Macau, etc)
- johnzim 13y agoLast time I was back in April of this year, Lantau was a little better but realistically still not good enough to consider living there, much less bringing up kids. I ended up feeling out of breath crossing the road. I haven't been back to Macau since I was a kid though, so it looks very different now (Thanks to Mr Ho.) My grandfather grew up in HK too. He passed away last summer, struck down by a rather horrible respiratory based cancer. However, I'm wary of too much confirmation bias in attributing that to the pollution too. It'll be interesting to see what the respiratory disease numbers are like in the coming decades.
- haosdent 13y agoI am Chinese. The whole China are suffer from air pollution, not noly Shanghai.
- wang0109 13y agoPollution is now the No.1 reason rich people migrate out of China, second to Education of their kids. I claim this from experience.
- dylandrop 13y agoKind of unfortunate too -- move away, and leave the problem behind. Of course there's no problem with getting out of the polluted area, but there's a problem with just giving up and moving elsewhere, forgetting the pollution exists and not trying to solve it from abroad.
- knappe 13y agoHaving just come back, this week, from a three weeklong trip visiting a large portion of the country (Beijing, Xi'an, Chengdu, Guilin, Shanghai, Nanjing and Shijiazjuang [along with a number of minor cities]) the pollution was by far the worse in Shijiazjuang, though not on the level seen in Shanghai this week. Shanghai was polluted, but the wind was generally blowing most of the pollution away from the city. My impression was that most people have a rather nonchalant attitude towards the pollution. They know it is bad, but don't really know what to do about it. This includes my American brother who has been living in Shijiazjuang for the last year. Whenever the topic of pollution came up, he didn't really seem to have any strong feelings about the pollution, either way and explained that seems to be most people's attitude too.
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- 3am 13y agoI appreciate how this is currently sharing the frontpage with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6860839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6860839
- coldcode 13y agoAir pollution is one thing the leadership suffers as well. Everyone has to breathe. If the people are poor or suffering in some other way but the leadership is living large then they can ignore the issues. But everyone needs air. At some point they have to deal with it.
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- jajathehut1 13y ago+1. Also applies to western countries riding their moral highhorse - pollution knows no borders. 1/3rd of pollution in LA comes from China.
- wil421 13y agoWhat did the cities look like in the US and Europe during parts of the Industrial Revolution? I cant imagine it was as persistent and thick as some parts of China.
- DanBC 13y agoAs already mentioned in the thread the London "pea soupers" were as bad, or worse, than the pictures we see here. Google image search for ["pea souper"] for images from 1950s London.
- wil421 13y agoHere is a good link in case anyone is interested. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2243732/Pea-souper-killed-12-000-So-black-screen-cinemas-So-suffocatingly-lethal-ran-coffins-How-Great-Smog-choked-London-60-years-ago-week.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2243732/Pea-souper-k...
- nabla9 13y agoInvestment idea: Companies that manufacture sulfur dioxide scrubbers for coal plants.
- kvnwng 13y agoThere's also a lack of understanding on the effects of this pollution, especially as it becomes more regular. I worked and lived in China for 7 years and just getting parents to close the windows of an obstetric hospital with newborns was difficult enough. There is a belief that "fresh air" is always better than what is in the room. When I asked nurses about the public health impact of this pollution on children, they often stared blankly back.
- ashray 13y agoHad the exact same problem with my parents in New Delhi. Father was suffering from lung disease. Wanted to sit outside on the balcony - fresh air, apparently. I tried to explain to him that the air is laden with dangerous levels of particulate pollutants. He didn't care. He died earlier this year. PM10/2.5 levels continue to be disastrous (1900+/700+ on some days especially around Diwali). Mother still likes to open balcony doors and room windows to let 'fresh air' flow through the house. Neither are/were uneducated. Post grads in SCIENCE FFS! Cannot. Explain. It.
- jpatokal 13y agoBut does closing windows really help? I mean sure, short term it slows down the exchange of air between the inside and outside, so it'll be helpful if there's a sudden spike that goes away. But if the pollution is a chronic problem, and it certainly is in Shanghai and New Delhi, then eventually the equilibrium will equalize and the air inside will be just as bad.
- c0riander 13y agoIt would help if your air conditioning/HVAC system is also doing air filtration (as they do in the US, not familiar with Shanghai/New Dehli).
- ashray 13y agoIt helps when there are drastic spikes in PM levels outdoors such as during rush hour or during high pollution events like Diwali. (people burn fire crackers en masse during Diwali, creates a ton of pollution) Also, we do have air purifiers and air conditioners running indoors so those help a bit, but once you put them off, opening the doors and windows isn't going to help with situation.
- kibwen 13y agoFor historical reference, here are some breathtaking photos of mid-century Pittsburgh: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2155742/Hell-lid-taken-The-pictures-bygone-Pittsburgh-residents-choking-clouds-smog.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2155742/Hell-lid-tak... I wonder if anyone can cite a source for one of the claims made in the article: "Also lots of people thought that high smoke output was a sign of high productivity and that coal smoke was good for the lungs and helped crops grow."
- huxley 13y agoIf you've lived near farms, pulp-n-paper mills or fish processing plants, you will often be told that the stink is the smell of money and you should stop complaining. I expect it was something similar.
- mikestew 13y agoAs I would tell my father as we passed a pig farm, "yeah, but it's not the smell of my money."
- fnsa 13y agothis looks like a good sign for the world economy. S&P 2000!
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago344 2.5 AQI right now in Beijing. I just bought a $1k air purifier to cope last week to cope with what is going to be a very bad winter.
- simplemath 13y agoWhat model?
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoBlue air. Second largest one.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoI see this as a difficult to fake signal that China's economic growth is more real than some folks in the West would like to believe. It is similar to the challenges faced by industrial cities in the West as they exploited the massive production capacities created during WW II. Generally the reasoning goes, high pollution from lots of power plants / factories is a function of production of those power plants / factories. You can fake GDP numbers but its not as straight forward to fake this sort of environment. That said, it would be unfortunate if China doesn't get their act in gear soon and start putting scrubbers on plants and cleaning up their act here.
- riquito 13y agoThat's true, but you also earn _a lot_ of money ignoring safety measures. They're paying with their lives part of this productivity
- beachstartup 13y ago> China's economic growth is more real than some folks in the West would like to believe i know that people in general are racist against the chinese for all sorts of reasons, but this is the first time i've heard this one. does anyone actually doubt china's economic growth? i mean all you have to do is go there and see it. (granted, very, very few 'experts' on china have ever actually been there)
- ChuckMcM 13y agoIt isn't racism. This link provides a useful summary of the question : http://ineteconomics.org/china-economics-seminar-0/short-history-china-s-doubtful-gdp http://ineteconomics.org/china-economics-seminar-0/short-his... The global interest in China's actual GDP on a comparative scale is to help estimate things like their future consumption of natural resources, their threat to global stability, and to evaluate global recessions/growth more accurately. The problem with "seeing it" is differentiating what you are seeing with what is. So for example a city in the US that has a lot of large buildings being built is a clear sign of economic growth because the market dynamics are structured so that people don't build buildings unless they believe they can rent them out profitably, so they 'lead' in the sense there is demand for that space, they go up, it gets rented, and now there are a bunch of new jobs in the city which brings in workers with wages etc etc etc. But in China there are buildings that were built simply because the government said "Build a building." There are buildings that are totally empty (see this link http://io9.com/chinas-brand-new-abandoned-cities-could-be-dystopian-m-1238731420 http://io9.com/chinas-brand-new-abandoned-cities-could-be-dy... which has some fascinating pictures). So people don't trust the economic statistics the government produces and seek out other ways of either confirming or denying what is said. Energy consumption is one such indicator which, when combined with a technology sophistication index, can provide another data point on China's economic strength.
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- crazygringo 13y agoCurious... from a cancer-risk standpoint, this is the equivalent of smoking how many cigarettes that day? One? Ten? A pack? Two packs? Fifty packs? Or do we not have enough data to even guess?
- calgaryeng 13y agoAnd yet your President is still prioritizing coal over Canadian oilsands....
- nostromo 13y agoIt's amazing how much of this is getting to the West Coast of the US. By one measure 29% of SF's air pollution originates in Asia. http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/88/i46/8846news3.html?T+Online+News http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/88/i46/8846news3.html?T+Online+...
- _pmf_ 13y agoDamn these Chinese! Can't they cheaply produce our goods with slave labor without polluting our precious planet?
- tokenadult 13y agoThis could amuse me, but it saddens me, of course. The reason this could almost amuse me is that I remember a conversation in 1982 in Taipei, soon after my first visit to China, with a student from France. He too had just been to China, and he thought China was a wonderful place, "Because it has no air pollution." (Compared to 1982 Taiwan, yeah, the P.R.C. had very little pollution because it had very little industrial production. I have never been to France, so I don't know if he was also making a comparison to 1982 France by that comment.) I wish that China (and, for that matter, India) had made it a national development goal to grow in an environmentally friendly way. Once, we didn't know technologies for producing industrial output and raising prosperity without producing quite a bit of pollution along the way, but China (and, again, India) could have learned from the mistakes of other countries and the new technologies they developed to build up output without adding so much to pollution. Today, Taipei is remarkably clean. I was stunned in 2001, when I last lived there as a permanent resident, by a visitor from Ukraine who arrived in Taiwan after visiting Hong Kong. He commented that he liked Taiwan better than Hong Kong because it was cleaner. I was stunned by that comment because the last time I visited Hong Kong (before retrocession to China), no one would have said so. Hong Kong is downwind of China, and maybe is not as cleaned up anymore now that it is under Chinese rule. Taiwan under democratization has become very clean indeed (although it too is downwind of China). Politicial pluralization through a free press and free elections (an advantage India already has) and effective rule by law (an advantage India is developing) seem all over the world to help countries prosper in a more environmentally sustainable manner. I wish China well in developing democracy and rule by law, and in any event to enjoy clean air sooner rather than later.
- tanzam75 13y agoIndia's cities are better -- but not that much better. In January 2013, Beijing made headlines for a record-high PM2.5 of 755 mg/m^3. Nobody paid any attention to New Delhi, whose PM2.5 topped out at 565 mg/m^3 the next day. India's GDP is currently 1/4 that of China. Imagine how bad things will get in another 10 years, when India's GDP reaches China's current GDP. Source: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-01-15/pollution/36352070_1_air-pollution-cu-pollution-levels http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-01-15/pollu...
- teyc 13y agoFor the engineers this is an interesting read: http://cornerstonemag.net/pollution-control-of-coal-fired-power-generation-in-china-an-interview-with-wang-zhixuan/ http://cornerstonemag.net/pollution-control-of-coal-fired-po... According to this article, coal fired stations are no longer the primary source of PM2.5. Road vehicles emit an order of magnitude more particulate matter. I recall about 20 years ago, Santiago had to implement a system where odd-numbered vehicles were allowed to drive on one day, and even-numbered the next, to cut down on the haze problem. Perhaps electric vehicles are the way to go.