Star Man
02-02-2013, 08:06 PM
Beijing air pollution hits ‘hazardous’ level
Flights were cancelled and factories shut down as industrial smog reduced visibility to 100 metres.
By: Hamida Ghafour (https://www.thestar.com/authors.ghafour_thorold_hamida.html) Foreign Affairs reporter, Published on Tue Jan 29 2013
Downloaded February 2, 2013 from https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/01/29/beijing_cancels_flights_shuts_factories_as_pollution_hits_beyond_index_levels.html
A young girl in a pink snowsuit wears a cartoon mask to protect her young lungs. Elsewhere in Beijing, a grandmother tenderly presses an oxygen mask to her grandson’s face because he suffers from a respiratory disease.
Scenes like these played out across China’s capital Tuesday as a thick, white haze of industrial smog suffocated the city for the fourth time in the past month (https://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1314664---extremely-awful-beijing-smog-keeps-children-indoors-prompts-unusual-official-openness). Residents were urged to stay indoors and more than 100 flights were cancelled in several cities as visibility was reduced to about 100 metres.
The government ordered 103 heavy-polluting factories to suspend production until Thursday, the official state news agency Xinhua reported.
Fine air pollution was at “hazardous” levels, according to the American embassy’s Twitter feed (https://twitter.com/BeijingAir). Peak levels of PM2.5 — microscopic particulate matter that can embed deep into the lungs and pose a serious health risk — were 526 micrograms per cubic metre over a 24-hour period, according to the embassy’s monitoring station in Beijing. The level recommended by the World Health Organization is just 25 micrograms per cubic metre.
Exposure to PM2.5 pollution can lead to cardiovascular and lung disease, and increases the risk of cancer.
In a sign that state authorities are concerned about the impact of pollution and open to more debate, Xinhua quoted critics who called for a car ban and new air-pollution laws. Among the most outspoken was Wang Lifen, a former journalist and blogger who said cars should no longer be allowed.
“Everyone — senior officials and VIPs included — should take buses and subways instead of private cars,” she told Xinhua. The agency also quoted comments from Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, where some complained that children should be allowed to stay home from school on high-pollution days. Major sources of pollution include the chemical factories surrounding Beijing and the coal that is burned for heating and industry, said Bruce Urch, a research associate at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.
“Coal contains sulphur and sulphur is a nasty pollutant,” he said. “The other problem is cars. It is basically a population problem. If you have 20 million people and many have cars, the emissions from that are big.”
Children are at particular risk because their lungs are still developing, Urch said, and the ubiquitous face masks worn in Beijing are of limited help because they cannot filter out harmful ozone.
PM2.5 air pollution may have led to 8,572 premature deaths last year in four major Chinese cities including Beijing, according to a study (https://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/press/releases/climate-energy/2012/air-pollution-health-economic/) by Greenpeace and Peking University’s School of Public Health. China began allowing PM2.5 levels to be monitored in 2011, so its impact on health is in the early stages of being assessed, the reported noted.
With the rise of social media, the authorities can no longer ignore the problem, said Lynnette Ong, associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto.
“Traditionally the authorities have tried to cover up and report as little as they could, but now they see they cannot cover up anymore and so there is disclosure of information,” she said. “At one point the authorities reprimanded the U.S. embassy for the air pollution monitor reports, which are increasingly read by Chinese people.”
Beijing’s new mayor Wang Anshun will have to balance citizens’ demand for cleaner air with economic development, an editorial in the China Daily newspaper said.“(Beijing) should definitely not be a city that has most of its winter days shrouded in smog and neither should it be a city whose roads are congested most of the time,” the newspaper said.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Beijing's air pollution crisis and China's response highlight important aspects of life in the industrialized world. Of primary importance is the comment by the China Daily newspaper that citizens' demands for cleaner air should be balanced against economic development. Chinese government is not much different than American government in this regard. The Economy and its needs are given precedence over human beings and theirs. In America, fracking perfectly illustrates how currently The Economy is treated as more important that humanity. The Economy is now the official religion around the world. Indigenous peoples may still barter, but their lives are despoiled by The Economy as the rain forest is cut down to grow a few year's worth of corn to feed cattle for burgers. The Economy does not care if toxic, carcinogenic compounds from fracking contaminate human beings' drinking water. Worship of The Economy sacrifices lives and children's lungs.
Note too how much China is like the U.S. in that attempts are made in China to hide the true damage being done by ozone and particulates while in the U.S. industry attempts to hide the dangers of cigarette smoke, the dangers of nuclear waste, the dangers of Depleted Uranium, the dangers of combat-related PTSD, the dangers of pesticides in our food supply, the dangers of global warming, the dangers of assault rifles, etc., etc., etc. Like the U.S. which has attacked Wikileaks for publicizing government duplicity in many areas, China attacks the U.S. for publishing the pollution data.
It is relevant to notice that automobiles, jet planes, and industrial machines are not affected by high levels of pollution. The only reason flights were cancelled was because of the increased smog caused by the jets and because pilots could not see to land their planes. As the world has become increasingly machinified, the machines have altered the environment so that human beings are selected against and machines are selected for. Machines do not get cancer. Automobiles do not get black lung disease. Cellphones are unaffected by particulates. Robots function very effectively in highly polluted environments.
It should also be noted that as our species' population has exploded the formerly effective organizational structures have been superseded. When there were only a few million of us, the tribe worked well. City states replaced tribes as the population grew. Kingdoms followed. Nation states replaced kingdoms. At each level, the organizational structure became more important than the groupings of people, and even more significantly, the organizational structure took on an identity. People once swore allegiance to the tribe, then to the city state, then to the kingdom, then to the nation state. Now, corporations and bureaucracies have replaced the nation state. We live in a corporatocracy, not a nation with a democratic form of rule. Corporations have superseded nation states. BP, Shell, KBR, Apple, Siemens, Ford, GMC, ADM, Monsanto, and a host of other corporations cross national boundaries seamlessly. Bureaucracies are united with corporations in the corporatocracy. Big Media, Big Pharm, Big Finance, Big Defense, Big Government, Big Ag, Big Political Parties make up the corporatocracy. Oaths of allegiance -- now they're called Personal Service Contracts or Employment Contracts -- bind workers to the well-being of the corporation or bureaucracy, not to the well-being of citizens. Whistleblowers are punished severely.
One day perhaps our species will realize that the purpose of life is to fully realize our human potential. Economic success has nothing to do with full realization of human potential. We humans are trapped in a religious system, The Economy, that we are not even aware of. Attainment of monetary salvation drives facilitated evolution of machines that results in the environmental disasters of global warming, species extinction, pollution of water, land, ocean, and atmosphere. The Economy and The Machine have made possible an unsustainable human population explosion. People buy guns in the vain hope that they will be able to defend their meager supplies of food, not realizing that drought driven by global warming and overfishing driven by overpopulation mean there will be no more food.
The best thing that can be said for this situation is that pollution -- or perhaps it is an epiphenomenon of the Earth trying to protect itself -- has decreased men's sperm counts worldwide by 40%.
If I were a young person I would not bring a child into this awful situation.
Star Man
Flights were cancelled and factories shut down as industrial smog reduced visibility to 100 metres.
By: Hamida Ghafour (https://www.thestar.com/authors.ghafour_thorold_hamida.html) Foreign Affairs reporter, Published on Tue Jan 29 2013
Downloaded February 2, 2013 from https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/01/29/beijing_cancels_flights_shuts_factories_as_pollution_hits_beyond_index_levels.html
A young girl in a pink snowsuit wears a cartoon mask to protect her young lungs. Elsewhere in Beijing, a grandmother tenderly presses an oxygen mask to her grandson’s face because he suffers from a respiratory disease.
Scenes like these played out across China’s capital Tuesday as a thick, white haze of industrial smog suffocated the city for the fourth time in the past month (https://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1314664---extremely-awful-beijing-smog-keeps-children-indoors-prompts-unusual-official-openness). Residents were urged to stay indoors and more than 100 flights were cancelled in several cities as visibility was reduced to about 100 metres.
The government ordered 103 heavy-polluting factories to suspend production until Thursday, the official state news agency Xinhua reported.
Fine air pollution was at “hazardous” levels, according to the American embassy’s Twitter feed (https://twitter.com/BeijingAir). Peak levels of PM2.5 — microscopic particulate matter that can embed deep into the lungs and pose a serious health risk — were 526 micrograms per cubic metre over a 24-hour period, according to the embassy’s monitoring station in Beijing. The level recommended by the World Health Organization is just 25 micrograms per cubic metre.
Exposure to PM2.5 pollution can lead to cardiovascular and lung disease, and increases the risk of cancer.
In a sign that state authorities are concerned about the impact of pollution and open to more debate, Xinhua quoted critics who called for a car ban and new air-pollution laws. Among the most outspoken was Wang Lifen, a former journalist and blogger who said cars should no longer be allowed.
“Everyone — senior officials and VIPs included — should take buses and subways instead of private cars,” she told Xinhua. The agency also quoted comments from Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, where some complained that children should be allowed to stay home from school on high-pollution days. Major sources of pollution include the chemical factories surrounding Beijing and the coal that is burned for heating and industry, said Bruce Urch, a research associate at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.
“Coal contains sulphur and sulphur is a nasty pollutant,” he said. “The other problem is cars. It is basically a population problem. If you have 20 million people and many have cars, the emissions from that are big.”
Children are at particular risk because their lungs are still developing, Urch said, and the ubiquitous face masks worn in Beijing are of limited help because they cannot filter out harmful ozone.
PM2.5 air pollution may have led to 8,572 premature deaths last year in four major Chinese cities including Beijing, according to a study (https://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/press/releases/climate-energy/2012/air-pollution-health-economic/) by Greenpeace and Peking University’s School of Public Health. China began allowing PM2.5 levels to be monitored in 2011, so its impact on health is in the early stages of being assessed, the reported noted.
With the rise of social media, the authorities can no longer ignore the problem, said Lynnette Ong, associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto.
“Traditionally the authorities have tried to cover up and report as little as they could, but now they see they cannot cover up anymore and so there is disclosure of information,” she said. “At one point the authorities reprimanded the U.S. embassy for the air pollution monitor reports, which are increasingly read by Chinese people.”
Beijing’s new mayor Wang Anshun will have to balance citizens’ demand for cleaner air with economic development, an editorial in the China Daily newspaper said.“(Beijing) should definitely not be a city that has most of its winter days shrouded in smog and neither should it be a city whose roads are congested most of the time,” the newspaper said.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Beijing's air pollution crisis and China's response highlight important aspects of life in the industrialized world. Of primary importance is the comment by the China Daily newspaper that citizens' demands for cleaner air should be balanced against economic development. Chinese government is not much different than American government in this regard. The Economy and its needs are given precedence over human beings and theirs. In America, fracking perfectly illustrates how currently The Economy is treated as more important that humanity. The Economy is now the official religion around the world. Indigenous peoples may still barter, but their lives are despoiled by The Economy as the rain forest is cut down to grow a few year's worth of corn to feed cattle for burgers. The Economy does not care if toxic, carcinogenic compounds from fracking contaminate human beings' drinking water. Worship of The Economy sacrifices lives and children's lungs.
Note too how much China is like the U.S. in that attempts are made in China to hide the true damage being done by ozone and particulates while in the U.S. industry attempts to hide the dangers of cigarette smoke, the dangers of nuclear waste, the dangers of Depleted Uranium, the dangers of combat-related PTSD, the dangers of pesticides in our food supply, the dangers of global warming, the dangers of assault rifles, etc., etc., etc. Like the U.S. which has attacked Wikileaks for publicizing government duplicity in many areas, China attacks the U.S. for publishing the pollution data.
It is relevant to notice that automobiles, jet planes, and industrial machines are not affected by high levels of pollution. The only reason flights were cancelled was because of the increased smog caused by the jets and because pilots could not see to land their planes. As the world has become increasingly machinified, the machines have altered the environment so that human beings are selected against and machines are selected for. Machines do not get cancer. Automobiles do not get black lung disease. Cellphones are unaffected by particulates. Robots function very effectively in highly polluted environments.
It should also be noted that as our species' population has exploded the formerly effective organizational structures have been superseded. When there were only a few million of us, the tribe worked well. City states replaced tribes as the population grew. Kingdoms followed. Nation states replaced kingdoms. At each level, the organizational structure became more important than the groupings of people, and even more significantly, the organizational structure took on an identity. People once swore allegiance to the tribe, then to the city state, then to the kingdom, then to the nation state. Now, corporations and bureaucracies have replaced the nation state. We live in a corporatocracy, not a nation with a democratic form of rule. Corporations have superseded nation states. BP, Shell, KBR, Apple, Siemens, Ford, GMC, ADM, Monsanto, and a host of other corporations cross national boundaries seamlessly. Bureaucracies are united with corporations in the corporatocracy. Big Media, Big Pharm, Big Finance, Big Defense, Big Government, Big Ag, Big Political Parties make up the corporatocracy. Oaths of allegiance -- now they're called Personal Service Contracts or Employment Contracts -- bind workers to the well-being of the corporation or bureaucracy, not to the well-being of citizens. Whistleblowers are punished severely.
One day perhaps our species will realize that the purpose of life is to fully realize our human potential. Economic success has nothing to do with full realization of human potential. We humans are trapped in a religious system, The Economy, that we are not even aware of. Attainment of monetary salvation drives facilitated evolution of machines that results in the environmental disasters of global warming, species extinction, pollution of water, land, ocean, and atmosphere. The Economy and The Machine have made possible an unsustainable human population explosion. People buy guns in the vain hope that they will be able to defend their meager supplies of food, not realizing that drought driven by global warming and overfishing driven by overpopulation mean there will be no more food.
The best thing that can be said for this situation is that pollution -- or perhaps it is an epiphenomenon of the Earth trying to protect itself -- has decreased men's sperm counts worldwide by 40%.
If I were a young person I would not bring a child into this awful situation.
Star Man