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This is how people in the whole world will live in 2025
Because again, your ignorance is showing. Beijing can and does get clear days - when the inversion layers don't form, the wind off the Gobi sweeps right through the city. Sometimes you get a clear day, sometimes you get covered in yellow dust.
Not terribly polite, c1ue.. but certainly not your worst.
From personal experience of one week... Beijing is absolutely, positively the worst air pollution I could ever imagine. It must have been better 50 years ago without the mass of cars.
I would love to see a recent picture with blue skies. I have no idea what the city and skyline possibly look like. Perhaps when they banned autos for a week before the olympics they might have had it. or if a typhoon goes by. It was awful.
Last edited by aaron; January 19, 2013, 01:13 AM.
Reason: trying to avoid c1ue's nitpicking
From personal experience of one week... Beijing is absolutely, positively the worst air pollution I could ever imagine. It must have been better 50 years ago without the mass of cars.
In the '80s, you could go entire kilometers without seeing more than 5 cars at times. The air pollution then certainly was not due to cars. It was, and likely still is, due to burning coal directly or indirectly for household use.
I have never been to the peoples Republic of China. I try to boycott any country that is not a free market Democracy. So I go to Taiwan instead.
However, my ex boss's boss used to work in China. He speaks chinese and he said the air pollution was horrible. That is a circa 2005 data point.
I will say that air pollution used to be much worse in US cities like LA and Chicago, and most people think the improvement has to do with cleaner cars.
In the 24-hour period up to 10 a.m. Sunday, it said 18 of the hourly readings were "beyond index." The highest number was 755, which corresponded to a PM2.5 density of 886 micrograms per cubic meter. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's air quality index goes up to only 500, and the agency advises that anything greater than 300 would trigger a health warning of "emergency conditions," with the entire population likely affected.
So I'm not sure so if it is not a plan to reduce population. With the one child policy, there's gona be a huge number of elderly people to maintain in the future. It's easier on the people in power if these people pass on quicker.
That sounds way too Machiavellian. I think the simplest answer is the most logical. And the answer is greed. The same way it was back in America and the UK's smoggy days.
I'm with Touchring on this one. Not only does the smog create a toxic environment for inhalation and skin absorption, but also limits human vitamin-D creation, creating an awesome environment for a weak, unhealthy population. All great benefits to an elite hell-bent on keeping the earth and its resources to themselves.
The government does not maintain elderly people. That is why Chinese save 60% of their earnings.
Machiavelli is probably a hero to many in power there. Remember, the Chinese are not Westerners. They do not share the same morals.
Well, I'd argue that that is why China was selected to be the world's producer, with military action on their southern border (ie Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), among other actions during the 1960-70's, working in concert to pressure Chinese elites into the global system in exchange for cessation of hostilities. So, I'd say Western-Machiavelli probably trumps Eastern-Machiavelli, with the western goals culminating in Clinton's successful passage of GATT followed by China's supply of cheap capital & goods to US markets to help feed the asset bubble that was popped in 2008. The stuff is utterly brilliant to watch for the totally deviant mind.
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge ~D Boorstin
The fact that something like this is appreciated and sells like hotcakes in Beijing speaks volume about the quality of air in the city.
Beijing residents that have never gone out of the city to places like Xinjiang or Tibet (probably the only places in China you can find fresh air) might have forgotten what fresh air smells like after 10 years of bad air.
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