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Breathing Beijing's Air Is the Equivalent of Smoking Almost 40 Cigarettes a Day
iONiUM writes: The Economist has a story about how bad the air quality is in Beijing. Due to public outcry the Chinese government has created almost 1,000 air quality monitoring stations, and the findings aren't good. They report: "Pollution is sky-high everywhere in China. Some 83% of Chinese are exposed to air that, in America, would be deemed by the Environmental Protection Agency either to be unhealthy or unhealthy for sensitive groups. Almost half the population of China experiences levels of PM2.5 that are above America's highest threshold. That is even worse than the satellite data had suggested. Berkeley Earth's scientific director, Richard Muller, says breathing Beijing's air is the equivalent of smoking almost 40 cigarettes a day and calculates that air pollution causes 1.6m deaths a year in China, or 17% of the total. A previous estimate, based on a study of pollution in the Huai river basin (which lies between the Yellow and Yangzi rivers), put the toll at 1.2m deaths a year—still high."
Where are you seeing that assumption made? As far as i can see, the article and summary both clearly make distinctions between conditions in Bejing and throughout the country as a whole.
For instance:
Pollution is sky-high everywhere in China. Some 83% of Chinese are exposed to air that, in America, would be deemed by the Environmental Protection Agency either to be unhealthy or unhealthy for sensitive groups. Almost half the population of China experiences levels of PM2.5 that are above America’s highest threshold.
Agree that people should watch that documentary though - it's very good.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
The progressives are responsible for making our air clean. The big cities in America used to look like China is now, but the EPA was created to do something about it, and has succeeded admirably. People rag about the government overreaching, but this is one shining example of the government solving a big problem. Unfortunately, the EPA has been hamstrung by the conservative Congress, which seems to think that keeping our air from becoming all polluted again is too much of a price for industry to pay. Assholes.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Yet another article that assumes Beijing = China. Sigh. It's like there's only one city in China. Imagine if European journalists assumed New York City was all there was to know about the entire USA. And China is even bigger, and has four times the population! I think the problem is due to the fact that most Western journalists live in Beijing, and they are not really interested in reporting about anywhere else other than where they live.
It's pretty bad in most areas of China where there are actually monitoring stations (which is where there are actually people). Here's a pointer to an interactive map which demonstrates it graphically
http://aqicn.org/map/californi...
One has to wonder what the hell is going on in Kashi and diqu zhan Hotan, which are near the Kyrgystan border, and have the highest and second highest (respectively) "bad" numbers of any reporting stations in the world.
This is called closed-mindedness and provincialism if it occurs in rural people, but now it's suddenly acceptable?
Actually, it's called "journalists are assigned "minders" and are only permitted to go wherever the heck the government lets them go, and nowhere else, so they only see what the government allows them to see". Welcome to China; new employee orientation for the state controlled media for foreign journalists is on alternate Tuesdays.
This is what unregulated industry looks like. Everybody remember this the next time some libertarian pops off about the market deciding such things, or how there's no such thing as externalities. Making super cheap stuff is easy if you don't have to pay all your costs but can dump them on other people to (in this case literally) suck up.
Don't worry, we get just as annoyed when non smokers whine and bitch near us. Whole lotta air on the planet. Nobody's forcing you to breathe near me.
Exactly when does your pollution become an aggression against me? And the mechanism to deal with this under a libertarian regime would be what exactly? You know, since you hate government and all.
Says you. Funny, I've never seen externalities addressed by libertarianism. You can spin it any way you want, but if the communists in China (which the economy itself is becoming a hybrid communist/capitalist model) were libertarian the shit would still be happening.
Go fucking live in Somalia and leave the adults to get work done, please.
So you envision a libertarian paradise with strongly enforced environmental regulations? I daresay you have a unique take on libertarianism.
I read the internet for the articles.
How about we just be honest and say that libertarianism means whatever a libertarian says it means at any time in any situation?
And what air do you own as an individual? The air around your face? The air on your property? And how do you propose to put fences around the air you own? How would "the state" allow people the right to own air? Can I rent some air?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The problem with this view is:
1) What if Big Company A dumps the pollution on their land, but it seeps into the groundwater and poisons wells off their land. They didn't put the pollution off their land. Do they need to contain the pollution in some manner? What if that containment fails? What if it is properly contained but an exceptional event occurs and it leaks? Exactly what constitutes proper containment? Before long, you have environmental laws passed and enforced again.
2) What if Big Company A pollutes and the victims are Poor People B who don't have the financial resources for a legal battle? Can big companies do whatever they want provided that they do it to people who can't afford to fight back?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
How are issues with odors and other types of pollution resolved by the tort law as it stands now? Would a factory that started spewing poisonous gases be liable for any downwind damages? You are right though that "own air" is a poor choice of words.
If my lungs are destroyed by your factory, it's not much solace to me if my heirs get some money 5 years after I'm dead. I'd much rather have a strongly enforced regulation that prevents you from doing it in the first place.