Posted on 10/11/2004 7:20:20 AM PDT by dead
On some nights when the wind blows on the outskirts of town a foul chemical smell penetrates the air so intensely that residents hold their noses and run into their homes.
In the winter the coal dust is so thick that many people spend the entire season coughing.
Like much of the rest of Shanxi province in northern China, the industrial city of Linfen thrives on coal. Coal mining, coal processing and coal-fired power plants keep the people of Shanxi employed and supply most of China's energy needs.
It is also one of the most environmentally dangerous places in the world. Linfen (population 4 million) is the dirtiest city in China, and one of the most polluted on the planet.
"When I spit in the mornings it's black," said Li Ping, as she sat with neighbours, sewing shoes.
The three most polluted cities in China are all in Shanxi, the most coal-rich province, and the problem is only getting worse.
With its energy shortage reaching crisis levels, China is furiously building new coal-fired power plants and bringing outdated ones back into production. Years of improvements in pollution control are suddenly being reversed.
At the weekend millions of Beijing residents were warned to stay indoors as smog choked the city, closed highways and forced the cancellation of an air show to mark the visit of France's President Jacques Chirac.
The pollution reduced visibility in central areas to just a few hundred metres, blurred the edges of buildings and turned distant skyscrapers into giant ghosts.
The Zhengyang Gate in Tiananmen Square, which had been illuminated red, white and blue in honour of Mr Chirac, was shrouded in the mist.
The haze, caused by low-grade petrol used in the city's rapidly growing number of cars, was said to be as bad as at any time for years, despite measures to clean the air in preparation for the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
The city government advised residents not to go outside and ordered sections of some highways to be closed.
The World Bank says 16 of the planet's 20 most polluted cities are in China, and the pollutants are travelling well beyond China's borders.
South Korea and Japan blame China's economic expansion for some of their pollution. And in Hong Kong the number of intensely smoggy days has risen dramatically.
With the economy booming, coal consumption has soared in recent years. It grew from 1 billion tonnes in 2000 to 1.7 billion tonnes last year.
Powering China's economic miracle has exacted a high toll on the health of the country's 1.3 billion people.
The Ministry of Health recently announced that the rate of lung cancer had doubled in the past decade. A study by Harvard University found about 100,000 cases of premature death annually due to exposure to pollution, and tens of millions of cases of asthma attacks, chronic bronchitis, casualty ward admissions and various other ills.
But the full extent of the health problems caused by pollution may not be known because the Government's raw data is apparently off-limits, even to Chinese researchers.
Cox Newspapers, The Guardian
Oh but JFKerry intends to fix our problem, especially now that the Russians have now signed on.
China signed Kyoto because it put absolutely no restrictions on their pollution. They are all too happy to hamstring the US and EU with eviro-nazis and continue their plan for economic, then political, domination.
China signed Kyoto because it put absolutely no restrictions on their pollution.
It doesn’t matter. They signed it! They signed it!
Results are unimportant. It’s the symbolism that matters.
They care. They really really really care.
It's all Bush's fault.
Having been in China twice in the last 10 months, I can firmly attest to this. The pollution in Shanghai and Qingdao is so bad you can feel it hit your skin as you walk down the street. There are actual particles of pollution that waft through the air like dust.
I was just going to say, Kyoto would solve that. With the prerequisite "sarcasm" tag, of course.
Note to Kerry: the population of China is 1.3 BILLION people! Four times our own! But hey, it sounds good, and that's what counts! And I imagine this enormous "graduation gap" only occurred in the past 3-4 years, so it's pretty clearly Bush's fault! Kerry can do better!
Making all that stuff for Wal*Mart does have its downside.
Shanghai is now over 20 million by itself and Qingdao is around 8 million. Both are extremely dense.
Couldn't we just check out the households of liberal green wienies and make a count of Chinese produced merchandise? "We don't want the pollution(or prosperity, for that matter)of industry in OUR rightious, bleeding heart, politically correct haven for free(as long as it's like ours)thinking liberals'eutopia."
Install some scrubbers on those exhaust stacks!
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