China
Beijing's air pollution
Blackest day
Jan 14th 2013, 4:49 by T.P. | BEIJING
ON January 12th of last year, in an article in the print edition of The Economist, we reported that the public outcry over Beijing’s atrocious air quality was putting pressure on officials to release more data about more kinds of pollutants. We also noted that Chinese authorities had already embarked on a wide range of strategies to improve air quality, and that they probably deserve more credit than either foreign or domestic critics tend to give them. But we concluded with the sad reality that such work takes decades, and that “Beijing residents will need to wait before seeing improvements.”
On January 12th of this year, Beijing residents got an acrid taste of what that wait might be like, as they suffered a day of astonishingly bad air. Pollution readings went, quite literally, off the charts. Saturday evening saw a reading of 755 on the Air Quality Index (AQI). That index is based on the recently revised standards of the American Environmental Protection Agency (the EPA), which nominally maxes out at 500. For more perspective, consider that any reading above 100 is deemed “unhealthy for sensitive groups” and that anything above 400 is rated “hazardous” for all.
Like many Beijing residents, your correspondent has mobile-phone apps that keep up with the pollution readings. At an otherwise pleasant Saturday-evening meal with friends, he joined his companions in compulsively checking for updates.
Those previously unseen numbers were hard to believe, but they did seem to match up well enough with the noxious soup we could see, smell and taste outside. We are all far more familiar with the specifics of air-quality measurement than we would like to be. Apart from the AQI readings above 700, we were quite struck to see the readings for the smallest and most dangerous sort of particulate matter, called PM 2.5, which can enter deep into the respiratory system. These are named for the size, in microns, of the particles. A reading at a controversial monitoring station run by the American embassy showed a PM 2.5 level of 886 micrograms per cubic metre; Beijing’s own municipal monitoring centre acknowledged readings in excess of 700 micrograms.
For perspective on that set of figures, consider that the guideline values set by the World Health Organisation regard any air with more than 25 micrograms of PM 2.5 per cubic metre as being of unacceptable quality.
Chinese authorities have complained about the American embassy's insistence on independently monitoring—and publicly reporting—Beijing’s air quality. And sometimes much is made of the vast differences between those readings and China’s own official ones, which are often less dire. Indeed, a key feature of one of those mobile-phone apps is the side-by-side comparison of those competing data-sets. (It is of course a bad sign that people here need more than one app to keep up with all this.)
But on a day like Saturday, the discrepancy between official readings and independent ones hardly seemed to matter; you didn't need a weatherman to know which way the ill wind blew. Or failed to blow, as the case may have been. One expert quoted by Chinese media attributed this spike in pollution to a series of windless days that allowed pollutants to accumulate.
But wind can be a problem when it does blow, too. In the outlying provinces that are part of Beijing’s airshed, there is a great deal of heavy industry. Pollution regulations are much harder to enforce there. And, in this colder-than-average winter, people have been burning more coal and wood than usual.
It is likely to be many more Januarys to come before China gets the upper hand on its air-pollution problems. Indeed, as we mentioned last January 12th, after nearly sixty years of trying and a vast amount of progress, the city of Los Angeles has yet to meet America's federal air-quality standards. If there is any consolation to what Beijing had to endure this January 12th, it is that it should lend urgency to the public outcry, and help speed things in the right direction.
The other consolation is that readings like the ones showing now on Monday midday (in the mid 300s, merely “hazardous” and “severely polluted”) feel fine by comparison.
(Picture credit: AFP)
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In a market economy, the obvious remedy would be to charge businesses a price for any noxious substances they emit. The worse the emissions, the higher the price. This gives them a strong incentive to change their ways. Maybe China could consider something similar.
@cwhope
Clearly, Beijing's worst problem is in coal & wood burning for domestic heating - in a city with more than a couple of million inhabitants (& Beijing has 21 million recorded inhabitants plus many million more illegals), burning of heavy fuels for heat is atmospherically lethal. And getting even more lethal as people become wealthier (and can pay to satisfy their urge to be warm).
Beijing must:
- build nuclear reactors & switch to French/ Scandinavian style electric heating
- extend gas lines to Siberia & Central Asia, expand domestic gas output, extend gas distribution to every home in Beijing, expand installation of gas boilers
Aside from that, it's clearly time for China (at least in & around the biggest cities) to end all subsidies & price controls for coal, oil & petrol, and instead to charge sufficient taxes on fuels as to combat combustion and reduce atmospheric pollution.
Health is at stake - killing year workers & driving your engineers & anyone with money to emigrate is bad for the economy.
The Economist report about air pollution in Beijing reads very bourgeois, 21st Century Western World: "air quality", disputed measurements, "smartphone apps", "astonishingly bad air".
I can't but think to "the Big Smoke" of London in the 19th Century, that could kill hundreds of people in a day during the Industrial Revolution and that brought "well-being" and the raise of the Middle Class to the West at such a shockingly fast rate to cause two World Wars in the early 20th Century.
And now, the shift of power to the East.
Allow me to introduce to everyone Simon Kuznets' hypothesis: the Kuznets Curve.
The curve was originally used in analysis of inequality but here we are using the Environmental Kuznets Curve.
On the x-axis we have income per capita and on the y-axis we have the amount of pollutants in the air. Data collection of countries income per capita and pollution level fall somewhat into an "inverse shaped U": very poor regions have low pollution levels to start with, and get more polluted as they industrialize, and peak somewhere in the middle income range, and get cleaner as they grow richer after the peak and are able to afford to be cleaner.
The peak can range from $7,000 to $20,000, A range that Beijing is in. It's hard to say right now whether if Beijing is already past the peak or have yet to pass the peak. Regardless, this stage of high pollution is likely to stay around for quite a while.
Hopefully it won't be as bad for the rest of China and the rest of the developing world as they reach their peak. Mankind seems to be unable to learn from past mistakes, let us just try to repeat our mistakes less often, and less severely.
Source:
http://www.macalester.edu/~wests/econ231/yandleetal.pdf
well, probably has nothing to do with the article, but none of ousiders could ever imagine how people love to spit out on public area here in Beijing, whenever their nicotine-deteriorated lung demands to do so. Westerners see the Chinese used to stride with bent head as an evidence of being gripped by fast-pace life, yet it is not the case. They are merely trying to avoid from stepping on the human-excretion dotted everywhere.
This Economist article is timely and of importance.
All great or big metropolitans are blessed each with either being a sea port itself or having one or more substantial river(s) passing through the city--- NYC, Shanghai, Shenzhen, SFO, Tianjin, Hong Kong, Moscow, London, Seoul, Taipei, Chongqing,……., the list can go on.
The problem with Beijing IMO is that it does not have a significant body of water to pass through or around the city to carry or move away the heat and emissions generated. (Beijing used to have a Yong Ding River, but it got dried up in the early 70s due to obviously mismanagement.)
We can only do so much to reduce the sources of carbon emissions in the city or planting green belts to mitigate bitter sandstorms from Beijing’s north and northwest. But human activity and consumption are keep growing in Beijing and other metro cities.
Beijing should and must let Mother Nature to do the air cleansing job by reclaiming a major city passing through river (by reconnecting, widening and flushing moat channels and the dry rivers su as Yong Ding river bed, e.g.) to function as a system pf living and moving body of waters at perhaps great cost necessarily, before it being overwhelmed by costly and hazardous paying dirt in the air in lieu of hitting pay dirt for city coffer.
----another example why China needs more infrastructure investment than before, not less, for its economic growth of 2013 and beyond.
Well, the only comfort in this whole thing is that all the top honchos in Beijing are going to breathe the same air like everyone else. But seriously, what can you do beyond expressing outrage? People still need to drive cars and have heating, which comes from burning coal. There is no cheap and quick solution.
Solutions?
1. Make more parks in the city. Beijing is a concrete jungle!
2. Improve public transport. Subways are to few and the building spree has actually slowed down in recent years.
3. Encourage more people to bike rather than drive.
4. Make special bus lanes so the bus is faster than car.
Take nuclear energy instead of coal
Subway building is going on, with the goal of over 1000km, the longest in the world for a city. But it will take time. Dedicated bus lane is a good idea and should be implemented immediately. Many people are still biking to work, but I doubt you can increase the number in any significant way. Still, no cheap and quick solution.
there is no comparison between beijing and los angeles. the economist has become such a blatant apologist for the chinese regime there there remains little room for objectivity.
A further call to relocate China's capital city is in the orders?
London had this problem in the 1950s, when most homes were heated with coal. Thousands died during the worst of the 'pea-soupers'. The solution was to ban the burning of solid fuel (coal and wood) in urban areas, and the provision of natural gas to residents. Lead-free, low sulphur fuels and catalytic convertors also helped. Result? No more smog.
Given that this is the (formerly)London Economist, why no comparison with the Great London Smog of 1952?
GOD