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China Races To Clean Up Olympic Air
Hugh Pickens writes "With the Olympics due to start in less than three weeks, Beijing is cranking up antipollution measures by yanking cars off the roads, expanding mass transit and staggering work hours in a bid to meet its pledge of a 'green' Olympics. Beijing has gone on a spending spree, relocating factories, seeding clouds, retiring old vehicles, planting millions of trees and halting building construction amid concerns that athletes and visitors could suffer breathing problems. For the next two months, owners of 3.3 million private cars can drive only on alternate days in China's capital, based on whether the last digit of their license plates is even or odd. Environmental and sports performance experts have cast doubt on the effectiveness of the measures taken so far. 'Arguably these are all short-term measures, just designed to control air quality for the time when the Olympics are on,' says Dr Andy Jones. Dr Angus Hunter warned that athletes are at risk for low performance if the air quality cannot be brought down to acceptable levels. 'Average times could be lower and the chances of records being broken become less. It's a bit like trying to exercise in a room when the gym is full of smokers.'"
That would be such a neat ad campaign. You could show Mao smiling as he holds a bus pass. I think it would work well in California too.
If only they would do this for the right reasons... They'll be cleaning up for the olympics but it will all go back to hell as soon as it's over. They should try to solve the problem permanently instead of suppressing it so others think it's livable over there.
Shouldn't that be "athletes are at risk for low performance if the air quality cannot be brought up to acceptable levels"?
based on whether the last digit of their license plates is even or odd
Sucks for the guys whose plates end with a zero.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
But how are they going to stop the sand storms coming from Mongolia?
If the whole world sees American athletes dressed up with goofy masks, they will see the USA as a bunch of sissies, especially if the Chinese -don't-.
This is my sig.
China is the one of the worst, if not THE WORST environmental disasters this world has ever had. They are having one HELL of a time trying to clean up the mess they've created for themselves.
By the time the Olympics comes around, I hope that the Chineese government has enough Egg Foo Young on their face to cause them to loose face to the whole world.
Then maybe, just maybe they'll clean up their act. Naaaa, what I am thinking.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Just got an email from my PCB Fabrication house :
"For our Printed Circuit Board customers using Chinese vendors, please be aware of the following air quality policy announcement from Chinese authorities:
In preparation for the Olympics, China has announced a factory shutdown for 9 weeks to clear smog and improve air quality in a 200 kilometer radius of Beijing. The shutdown begins July 17th and will extend until September 20th. Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and Shandong provinces are affected by the shutdown.
If air quality does not improve before the start of the Olympics, there may be an expansion of the shutdown. There are concerns there could also be a bottleneck at two main ports. "
Wonder how it will affect Chip prices
Ummm, no kidding? What does he mean, "arguably"? It's like how Athens temporarily incarcerated the city's thousands of stray dogs and then turned them all loose when the Games ended.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Arguably these are all short-term measures, just designed to control air quality for the time when the Olympics are on
Is it obvious to anyone else that that statement should be a sign? If you have to reduce pollution so athletes don't cripple their records, shouldn't you, I don't know, try and stop it forever? I honestly hope no records are broken, and that every athlete in an event outside performs terribly compared to history, so hopefully a few more people might open their damned eyes.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
It werery impowtant yeu cween up you aiw.
.. in time for the 2012 Olympics.
When mom comes around saying he can go play when his room is clean, he frantically shoves the mess into the closet...
You know, I used to cram before big tests all the time back in highschool. Did papers at the last minute... really didn't care about the subject matter until the final hour. I got by. Somehow though, I think China is a little to late to make any (significant) changes before the games begin.
worked for Belushi
It will be interesting how this will play out in the social/economical dynamics of China.
Will the employees be paid during the shutdown?
Have downstream manufactures in other areas made provisions to get alternate input sources?
Will there be any unexpected interruptions in the supply chain? Either domestic consumption or export goods.
If downstream factories in other areas have to shutdown there will not be government support, there will be unhappy workers.
Having unhappy idle workers while the government is telling everyone to be happy about the Olympics is not a good thing.
Also if US orders for Christmas are down because of US domestic fears then some idled factories might not find it easy to restart.
NOW I GOTTA BUILD CITY WALL TO KEEP CITY BUILDINGS CLEAN OR CITY PEOPLE GONNA COMPLAIN! GODDAMN MONGORIANS!!!
(string of text to get around caps filter, asdfbvukavfkavukabuywerbvfyabsvsdbfjkdhafbukaddfbwdfghweynetuakfukyvbuaaaf)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
hello, King Canute, is that you? (maybe one subtlety too far there. hmmm)
athletes are at risk for low performance if the air quality cannot be brought down to acceptable levels
Uh..call me crazy, but shouldn't this have been something that should have been taken into serious consideration before choosing a place like this for the Olympics? I mean, I may not be an expert on human physiology, but it would seem to me that having clean air for the Olympic competitors to breathe would have ranked among one of the highest in the checklist for selecting a location for the Olympics.
I usually hate following the Olympic because it's such a bore.
This year, all the stuff "around" the competition is WAY more interesting:
-How many people will be arrested for silly things?
-Will the athletes choke on the smog?
-Will anything be allowed to be broadcasted out of China?
-How many Chinese will try to defect?
-And of course: The badly translated sign of the day.
I don't think leaders of China will be able to stand have a spot light on them for the full 2 weeks. Imagine the fallout from regular Chinese people getting unfiltered news from the mouths of so many non-controlled people!
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
well it depends on what their smoking, a bit of crack/crystal meth or pcp may actually give them a boost.
I'm all for setting up this alternative drugie Olympics, if altitude training is ok, or lifting weights then why not a crack pipe.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
With people considering a space elevator, why not consider a space vacuum cleaner? A long tube with one end in space and the other split like, say, a flying spaghetti monster, with multiple ends to suck up particulates. And little dogs.
OR, you could just choose locations for the Olympics that aren't already polluted... nah, let's hold them somewhere that has air quality so bad it could affect the outcome of the races.
stuff |
Happens in every olympics.
During the Atlanta Olympics, many homeless people were taken for a bus ride to different part of the state.
Many of the homeless were jailed for silly offenses.
http://www.straight.com/olympic-cities-punish-poor
...INCINERATED the city's thousands of stray dogs.
I couldn't see how that would help the air quality. I guess the word "temporarily" should have clued me in.
Huh... you just made me relize THAT could be the reasons why Beijing was chosen for the Olympics. Few care about the sports themselves, but the drama... ah now that's a cash cow.
Its fine and fair to blame the Chinese government for not bringing up tougher industrial anto-pollution laws. We are also being narrow-minded in saying this is alll a Chinese problem.
The Western world has made China one giant production facility. All the really toxic production facilities - PCBs, paper (increasingly), steel and other metals, etc. are all being made in China. And they're making our clothes, food (which I *dont* buy), and so on. The shipping yards in China are the largest in the world for good reason.
I'm buying made in the USA or Canada - first, less pollution in transportation, saves jobs, and (should) be higher quality and safer.
China is overpopulated, yes, and thats a problem they (and we all have) to work to solve. Even if they had reduced pollution say by even 80% over the last decade, there's still too much being produced and too many people. We'd still have a problem.
I don't think for many reasons it was wise of IOC to approve China. Living in the city of the host of the next Games, development ain't all that environmentally friendly either. Sea-Sky highway being one of them.
There seems to be a lot of incredulity about Beijing's ability to clean up for the Olympics, but you are all forgetting that the government here is doesn't have the same limitations of a democracy, and can implement massive policy changes immediately. There are shutting down over 350 (!) factories down here, and have taken 60% of the cars off of the road. Most construction has stopped. I was here on Sunday, the first day this process went into effect, and we had a brilliant blue sky. Things are a little hazy again today, but they're not done shutting down everything yet. Expect a relatively pollution free Olympics. Sorry to rain on your hate parade guys. This is only a temporary solution though, which is amazing considering they spent 40 billion on infrastructure change to support the cleanup effort.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Is to spend some of that money on gigantic fans pointed towards Tibet, Japan, or somewhere else that's not China.
Looks like yet another case of the Chinese trying to put lipstick on a pig.
Boycott the Olympics, and buy American
For the next two months, owners of 3.3 million private cars can drive only on alternate days in China's capital, based on whether the last digit of their license plates is even or odd.
Mexico tried the whole "even or odd" license plate thing a while back (for similar reasons) and it was an epic failure.
People either bought another car, usually an older, more-polluting model, or just ignored the law. The result was that Mexico's air quality got WORSE from trying to restrict vehicles on the road because most 2nd (or 3rd) cars that were being purchased were older models with almost no pollution control equipment and higher fuel consumption.
I don't know what it takes to buy a car in China, or how the government regulates license plate numbers, but if it's in any way similar to Mexico, this will fail too.
Grandpa: My Homer is not a communist. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a communist, but he is not a porn star.
when visiting some former warsaw pact countries in the early nineties.
When they said don't go near the river they meant it, having soldiers nearby just to make sure. Seeing dead trees that had been in place for years and soot covered buildings. (granted it was cool to see architecture from the forties the dirt was amazing). That system abused nature as much as it abused the people in it.
China has spent over $40 BILLION dollars on this Olympics, I wonder how much was just to fix past environmental damage.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Actually, the one thing I find more interesting than anything else, is the amount of political activism from people who usually aren't involved in politics. This is the first time the Olympics has been so closely related to politics, whether it's the world's economic markets, the Tibetan question, the Falun Gong, the freedom of press, pollution, hydroelectric dams, minority rights, the value of the Yuan, the students sent to "spy" on the West, the practice of eating dogs in Beijing restaurants, the policing of the internet, or something else.
This is the first time in history where basically NONE of the news regarding Olympics has actually been about the Olympics themselves, but rather about how the host country is evil. Admittedly, many of these issues are real issues that need to be dealt with, but the ferocity with which the international press is attacking everything related to Olympics right now is probably unheard of in history -- I don't even know is the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany Olympics faced such an onslaught from media and citizens alike.
What I'm really interested in seeing is how many of these issues will continue to be relevant as soon as the Olympics moves to a different country with exactly the same problems, like, say, Russia. This will show whether this is the result of the rising political consciousness worldwide, or simply a display of international power struggle and political pressure.
How many people will attack the Russian Olympic torch demanding freedom for Chechnya? Will the German government put the Chechen flag on the parliament building while the torch is passing through Berlin? Will the pollution in Moscow make bigger headlines than the athletes themselves? Will we read about the assassinations of journalists or attacks against minorities in every bigger Russian city?
I don't know, but I'm waiting with interest.
Anonymous Coward... you stay classy!
Live forever, or die trying.
Unfortunately this won't be as interesting as you think, because they're truly world-class at show, behind-the-scenes action and changing facts by political pressure.
-How many people will be arrested for silly things?
If there are any foreigners arrested, the authorities will claim that they were arrested for offenses not related to politics, and authentic-looking footage will be presented. Rejecting the footage as fake will be regarded as anti-Chinese agitation. Domestic arrestees will be held until the end of the Olympic, and will not be allowed to make public statements under severe penalties (assuming there will be any, which I doubt).
-Will anything be allowed to be broadcasted out of China?
Yes, you won't notice anything unusual. Instead of trying to control the news broadcasts, they will control reality.
-How many Chinese will try to defect?
Zero. There is no noticeable "resistance movement" in China. They really believe in their government, even we think it's evil.
-And of course: The badly translated sign of the day.
All the Zhonglish you see originates from factories which try to save on packaging design. There are lots of people who can speak proper English in China, and they won't be saving on translators or anything that has to do with the Olympics, because it's a matter of life and death.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
US cities used to be that bad. I lived in Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit when they had steel mills. Cleveland was the worst, because it's not as windy. Normal visibility was under one mile.
The first time I went to downtown Cleveland, there it was: Heavy Industry - the Cleveland Flats. A river valley cuts through the city, and along the river were the steel mills. The Flats had trains running along public streets, some carrying red-hot steel ingots. A huge pipe a quarter mile long was supported by towers - and it rotated. This turned out to be a rotary cement kiln. Visibility was about half a mile there. One year, the river caught on fire when an oil slick was ignited.
Now the mills are gone, there are nightclubs along the river, and the city is dying.
The dream: that some day, China will be free enough to have their own fair and balanced Fox News station.
Now THAT's progress. Right, Papa Bear?
Yeah, because politics were never a part of the Olympic games.
Except in 1936. or 1940, 1944, 1956, 1972, 1976, 1980, or 1984.
The BJ Olympic is pretty much a face project. That's why the opening ceremony is held at 2008/08/08 08;08:08pm, rather than on a mid-September day when the weather is cooler and air quality better. But the top officials just don't bother to remember that nowaday nobody in the world undermines China's economic prowess and nobody looks them down because they are a third world country. Everybody agrees that Beijing and Shanghai have some of the most modern infrastructure hardware. People inside and out disgrace and fear China because of other small issues like environment irresponsibility, greedy business practices, widest income/wealth gap, social injustice, corruption, and of course that little human right thing in the eyes of Westerners.
All in all, while China is busy putting pretty make-up on their face, people instead stare at their ass.
"It's a bit like trying to exercise in a room when the gym is full of smokers."
It's even worse when they are smoking.
--- What?
on the positive side, may this push down the price of pork and petro, amid their 10% inflation?
Or how about chemical pollution in the US until the 1970s?
China's position on pollution is no different than what other countries went through... the difference is just one of scale.
How does China get a pass on this? They are supposed to be a modern superpower just like the U.S. They are not what I would call a "developing nation", and produce most of the advanced electronics we use today.
The failure they have is totally unrelated to to past problems the U.S. and others have seen with pollution. The effects are well known, as are means of controlling emissions. There simply is no will to impose any controls.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah, because politics were never a part of the Olympic games.
They were never the ONLY part of the Olympic games.
>Zero. There is no noticeable "resistance movement" in China. They really believe in their government, even we think it's evil.
I've tried to explain / describe this to people many times.
Occasionally I introduce them to one of my Chinese friends who
completely hates the Dalai Lama and any notion that Tibet should
be "free".
It's a lot of fun, really, because my friend is quite liberal and
extremely well educated, knows more about Chinese history and current
events than most Chinese, more about Tibet than any American with a
Tibetan flag on their yoga mat, etc. But people are usually just
totally shocked and unprepared for it because they've never actually
heard a different point of view besides "Tibet should be free"...
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
All that work was wasted when a butterfly flapped its wings in Texas and a hurricane hit.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
mrrrrrr..... (Think green or I'll eat your brains)
I've been reading this guy's blog off and on because he's posting pictures of the air quality. Compare this picture with this one to see what difference is being made.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Well you should read the article; they tried to move the factories but they couldn't find them because of the smog!!
You don't seem to know much about the modern Olympics. They're entirely a political. The sports are literally an excuse for an international gathering, and the Olympic committee specifically states that their primary goals in selecting locations are all political. This isn't a bad thing, but it means you should keep in mind that the sports have always been just an excuse, nothing more.
Actually, the one thing I find more interesting than anything else, is the amount of political activism from people who usually aren't involved in politics. This is the first time the Olympics has been so closely related to politics, whether it's the world's economic markets, the Tibetan question, the Falun Gong, the freedom of press, pollution, hydroelectric dams, minority rights, the value of the Yuan, the students sent to "spy" on the West, the practice of eating dogs in Beijing restaurants, the policing of the internet, or something else.
This is the first time in history where basically NONE of the news regarding Olympics has actually been about the Olympics themselves, but rather about how the host country is evil. Admittedly, many of these issues are real issues that need to be dealt with, but the ferocity with which the international press is attacking everything related to Olympics right now is probably unheard of in history -- I don't even know is the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany Olympics faced such an onslaught from media and citizens alike.
What I'm really interested in seeing is how many of these issues will continue to be relevant as soon as the Olympics moves to a different country with exactly the same problems, like, say, Russia. This will show whether this is the result of the rising political consciousness worldwide, or simply a display of international power struggle and political pressure.
How many people will attack the Russian Olympic torch demanding freedom for Chechnya? Will the German government put the Chechen flag on the parliament building while the torch is passing through Berlin? Will the pollution in Moscow make bigger headlines than the athletes themselves? Will we read about the assassinations of journalists or attacks against minorities in every bigger Russian city?
I don't know, but I'm waiting with interest.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
China could just host a lot of the Olympic events in-doors. Then they can develop a better energy policy. Better use of everyone's resources. Besides, it's not like they have a democratic utopia. Just ration off energy and reduce pollution better that way.
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The dream: that some day, China will be free enough to have their own fair and balanced Fox News station.
Now THAT's progress. Right, Papa Bear?
Every time Colbert calls O'Reilly that, I die a little inside.
R.I.P, Col. Robert E. Hogan
I went to Beijing in January 2007, and the polution was TERRIBLE. I couldn't get away from the smell, even in my 5 star hotel room! The smog in the air is so bad, that you can blow your nose and black shit comes out. Breathing is difficult. I have hopes for Beijing to clean up its act for the Olympics, but the reality is that it's likely NOT to happen to the degree they need it to, not in that summer heat.
The racist overtones (Egg Foo Young?) are unnecessary.
Well, being that the common expression is "egg on their face", and "egg foo young" is a common dish at a Chinese restaurant, it seems more an attempt at humour than racism.
I dont want to pick on UK, because the US had its share of deadly smog days. However the so-called first world has had its century of deadly smog .
Not sure how many people remember or care to know about the games of 1980 held in Moscow, but similar things happened there in order to promote the image of the USSR.
All people with questionable reputation were ordered to leave the city and the communist party spent a lot of time and money to ensure that everything was top notch (well, at least by the Soviet standards). Guess what happened when the games stopped?
If people cannot see through this dog and pony show that every country is going to put up in order to look good, then yeah, China's new green image is a great success!
I know that it my sound extreme. but the reality is this:
I just received a notice from my Printed circuit Board vendor in China stating that they will be unable to provide deliveries during this time due to mandatory shutdowns. thus i will have to resort to expensive U.S manufacturing. If im doing that then i assume others are doing the same. perhaps on a different scale then what my little company uses. As a whole this has to be effecting the average worker that works as such facilities there in china. Poor guy who was bringing home that 2$ a day now brings home none. on a larger scale you will see starvation, because i know more factory's then just PCB's manufacturing will be shut down.
that 2$ a day buys grain to eat. how will he earn his grain?
people might argue how this will effect consumer goods. but don't forget there is a human factor involved.
Wouldn't they be higher? Unless the smog makes you a faster athlete than ever before.
I'd definitely agree that we *all* share the blame in many of these cases.
Who buys the products made in the smog-spewing factories of China? We do
Who wants the cheap merchandise made by poorly-paid Chinese workers? We do
Yes, their government is responsible, but so are our own governments and citizens. It somewhat burns my ass to hear that often the same people who bitch about the "pollution in China" or "treatment of workers in China" also bitch about the fact that their made-in-China products starting to rise in price.
Yes, some of the crap that happens in China wouldn't necessarily happen over here, but we're still happy to farm out all the low-paid backbreaking work to "somewhere else" so we can have cheap commodity goods.
Fah.
There is no noticeable "resistance movement" in China.
Explosions this morning in the southern Chinese city of Kunming killed at least three people and injured 13 in what appears to have been a coordinated terrorist attack.
"Tibet should be free"...
Not too long ago, a Chinese friend of mine doing his PhD in the UK told me that all the noise and stuff made for the "Free Tibet" movement was naÃve, and that it could be compared to the "movement" to "free" Scotland from the English yoke...
Of course news agencies make a mountain out of a molehill [ahogarse en un vaso de agua?], the more it helps to sell, the better.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Another related demand on oil is that China is building a strategic petroleum reserve, similar to the one in the USA. Now, in theory, that build-out is still ongoing, and the fill rate is relatively slow. However, given the extreme importance of the diesel supplies during the Olympics, I would not be surprised if the Chinese SPR is being built and filled a lot quicker than publicized.
China's SPR barely gets mentioned in the media, but it's huge, though, smaller than that of the USA. They aim to store the equivalent of several weeks of their crude imports.
Is it really enough to affect the world price? Who knows, certainly not I.
This is more likely a hardcore radical communist cell (after all, they departed quite far away from the Marxist and Maoist ideology) than a democratic resistance movement.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Any pollutants will be shot on sight!
How long since the colonel made a live appearance, and his smile still adorns buckets of dead chicken. For this though, I think an animatronic lemming running on to the bus at each stop would be more apropos.
> -How many Chinese will try to defect?
Probably none. Unlike the former Soviet Union, China's general attitude towards unhappy citizens who want to leave has always been, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out."
This is just further evidence that in order for measures intended to improve air quality and reduce traffic congestion such as the much vaunted staggering work schedules to avoid rush hour, telecommuting, and driving on alternate days of the week -- not to mention shutting down 1/3 of the industrial economy -- can only be implemented under a totalitarian regime. The People's People are already suffering under these newly-imposed communist diktats.
And if you go to the Olympics, you may want to avoid the "chicken"...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
That is actually a good description of China: "a gym full of smokers"
If altitude training works, why not smog training ? At last the Kenyans will be beaten by the New Jersey runners.
Failing that, I suppose they could pump O2 into the stadium and pool to boost performance.
Don't smoke...
Nullius in verba
The advertisement before the linked LA Times video news story is the monstrously-sized, climate-changing, CO2-producing Chevrolet Silverado MONSTER UTILITY VEHICLE (with added cheesy "be-a-man and destroy the earth with our monster truck" low-pitch voiceover and all).
it's funny that everybody has the need to specify that ONLY the last digit has to be odd or even. Not the whole number! :))
Yes, it's a short-term measure.
But I still think it's a very important step. If it works, then it proves that something can be done, and with any luck will silence some of the nay-sayers.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Maybe if everyone in china jumped up and down all at once ...and farted at the same time...it would propel us further from the sun, easing global warming, easing photochemical smog...and possibly leave all the smog there is now behind us like a vapour trail...we should start preparing for this eventuality...I'm buying stock in Heinz Beans
People are making a lot of noise about the air quality in BeiJing. Personally, Iâ(TM)ve never been the least effected by the quality of the air, and I doubt that healthy athletes will notice it either. The big problem, and as far as I can tell no one anywhere has discussed it, is that BeiJing in August is bone dry â" dryer than anywhere Iâ(TM)ve ever been in the US, including Arizona. Anyone who is involved in an outdoor endurance event is going to have a high hurdle to adjust to if they are not training for that kind of an environment right now. I generally donâ(TM)t drink water at all during the day but when I go to BeiJing in August 15 minutes outdoors and I need water in a big way.
Yeah, because politics were never a part of the Olympic games.
Except in 1936. or 1940, 1944, 1956, 1972, 1976, 1980, or 1984.
You forgot 1916.