China's 8-Year-Old Lung Cancer Girl

With a 56% rise in lung cancer rates in a mere nine years, it can't be argued that the air quality in most of China is bad for you.  Horror stories have trickled out of the mainland, but none quite like the latest: an eight year girl being treated for lung cancer.  Proof, if proof were needed, that living next to a busy main road in Jiangsu and spending most of your time breathing in air that only slightly cleaner than an airport smoking lounge is actually not helping your lungs.

Politicians in the country have been adamant about blaming other things, from the Chinese "style" of cooking to the exhaust fumes of the millions of cars on the road - in fact anything that didn't include factories and coal fired electricity generators.

At the end of last month, Fang Li, deputy head of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said  "Beijing is an open city. All social forces will be mobilized and international advanced technologies and enterprises are welcome," when he announced that the city plans to invest 1 trillion RMB into cleaning up the air.  Whether those plans involve punishing factories that illegally pollute and routinely escape punishment because of the guanxi that their CEO has is another matter entirely.

 

Full of Hot PM2.5

Worried that attending the APEC Summit in Beijing next year would warrant the use of face masks and Hazmat suits, Zhao Huimin was grilled over the plans to curb air pollution in the city at the end of this year's meet up.  Under pressure to clean up the air ahead of the 2014 summit, Zhao put his foot right in it when he suggested in a TV interview that Chinese cooking might be responsible for pushing levels of PM2.5 up to levels far too dangerous to even look at, let alone breathe.

Not wanting to give away how much money is being apportioned to the project to reduce air pollution, Zhao simply said that more money was being spent than during the Olympics (a mere five years ago).  Confident that Beijing's more "mature" guidelines concerning air pollution would be in place by 2014, a brief glance over Zhao's career suggests that he might not be the best person for the job.

Last summer, Zhao was the guest of honor at the much ballyhooed Foreign Language Festival, were plans were announced to remove signs and menus written in Chinglish in a an effort to make Beijing at least look like "a more international city".  A year later, not much has changed, despite Zhao's office publishing "local standards for English translation of public signs, menus, organization names and official positions".

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China Bans Coal Power Plants

In an attempt to downgrade it's AQI from "chewable", coal-fired power plants in key areas around Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai will be banned.  The move comes after an intense leafleting campaign and some signs being installed failed to clean up the skies around the major cities that are permanently shrouded in grey gunk filled skies.

The State Council said the country's air pollution situation is "grim" and is "harming people's health and affecting social harmony and stability." The action plan calls for the density of fine particulate matter — a gauge of air pollution — in Beijing to drop by 25 percent by 2017 from 2012 levels and by at least 10 percent in cities nationally.

Ever since the announcement that the God-awful air quality had caused a 14% downturn in tourism to China, officials have been desperate to reign in polluters, and at least try to keep the AQI below 90.  Initially taking bold steps to outlaw the US Embassy from broadcasting it's air quality index figures on Twitter, the Chinese government has finally come around to the idea that China's crack-like dependence on coal might be affecting the air somewhat.  From

Earlier in the year, figures from the official Chinese air quality monitoring stations hit 700 on it's PM2.5 scale, making the air in Beijing worse than what you might find in an airport smoking lounge.  Burning coal fuel  means that people in the south live five and half years longer than people in the north, where coal burning was heavily promoted by the government.  Added to that, deaths caused by unsafe mining conditions cost the state an estimated 1.7 trillion yuan a year - nearly 7% of the countries GDP.

Burning coal contributes a number of noxious gases to the atmosphere, none of which are particularly helpful when it comes to living a long and happy life.  When Greenpeace released it's "True Cost of Coal" report in 2008, it showed that smoking a cigarette was probably more beneficial to human health than take in a deep breath in some parts of China.  Well, not that bad, but it was pretty bad, but it does generate 375 million tonnes of ash, which ends up in someone's lungs somewhere.

http://youtu.be/cUW8L-kX3pQ

Since the US government estimates that China gets around 70% of it's energy needs from burning coal there's clearly a long way to go before we can expect to see permanent blue skies over Beijing.  Until then, the CCP promises that they'll try and get it down to a respectable 65% over the next four years.

Under normal circumstances, we would say don't hold your breath....

 

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Air Pollution Concerns Halt Coal Plant Plans

Plans for a coal plant 50km from the coastal city of Shenzehn  have been scrapped due concerns over air pollution in the country.  Bowing into pressure from locals online and in print, local authorities put a stop to the construction project.

Following criticism in social media and traditional media, 43 members of the city's People's Congress petitioned the administration to cancel the project and not to allow the construction of any new coal-fired power plant anywhere within the city's borders.

China has been desperate to kick it's coal habit, but still remains the largest import of the black stuff, despite massive investments in green energy solutions and other alternative fuels.  The only question remains is that if it isn't going to be built near Shenzhen, then where is it going to be built?

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