The Dragon's Breath - Resilience.org
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Perhaps China had been pretty once. It was difficult to tell because everywhere I went, even in Zhengzhou, I could only dimly perceive the country through a persistent veil of smog. We knew going in, of course, that Beijing had a very serious pollution problem. Last winter, the city made international headlines when the level of pollution air zoomed off the charts, choking any citizen who didn’t wear a face mask or employ an air filter. The pictures broadcast to the world of Beijing’s streets, barely discernable through the thick smog, looked liked something from a Dickensian nightmare. The smog is a principally a product of dirty coal plants and unregulated vehicle emissions (from a bewildering array of two, three, and four-wheeled contraptions). Toss in unchecked growth, bureaucratic inaction, dust from nearby deserts, and Beijing’s bowl-like topography and you have a recipe for disastrous air pollution.
The stories actually caused us to pause for a moment in our plans to visit China. In the U.S., an air pollution reading of 70 is considered pretty bad (on a scientific scale called PM 2.5 that counts particles in the air). If it hits 300, the EPA recommends that adults stay indoors. In Beijing this winter, the readings often hovered above 500 for days. 500! Did we really want to spend our precious time together (and scarce dollars) walking around Beijing in that stuff? We supposed we could wear face masks, but what sort of vacation was that? Fortunately, we learned that spring means lower levels of smog, so we crossed our fingers and stuck to the original plan. Here’s one of the photos of Beijing that gave us pause:
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Air pollution has metaphorical as well as physical properties. It can be measured scientifically, in microns or the amount of particulate matter in a given quantity of space, but it is also a measure of a nation’s will to create a healthy environment for its citizens. That’s because smog can be cleaned up – if there’s the will to do so. Smog originates from specific sources, such as coal plants, factory smokestacks, vehicle tailpipes, household chimneys, and anything else that burns fossil fuel. These can be regulated and their emissions reduced – if there’s the will to do so. Some elements of smog are harder to control, of course, including dust and ozone, but the vast majority of the problem is eminently fixable – if there’s the will to do so.
There are plenty of examples that choking smog isn’t a permanent condition. Los Angeles, famously, has made huge strides toward improving its air quality. Mexico City, generally considerable the smoggiest urban center on the planet, made headlines this spring when it announced that it had recorded 248 “good” air quality days in 2012 compared to just 8 in 1992. Both cities support the truism “If there’s a will, there’s a way.” To be fair, China has pledged to improve Beijing’s air quality and while we were in town a number of air-clearing initiatives were announced in the pages of the English-language China Daily. The view from our 12th floor hotel window, however, suggested a different trajectory. The air had a grayness that prohibited us from seeing the details of an apartment building a short distance away – a grayness that I saw all the way to Zhengzhou and back. We saw the sun clearly only once during our stay, when a stiff breeze from the west one evening blew out the smog. Beijing had hills! We adjusted our plans on the spot and headed out to the Great Wall the next morning, to be rewarded with a wonderful hike under (reasonably) clear skies.
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http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-06-03/the-dragon-s-breath
