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Another Chinese Megapolis Shut Down By "Hazardous" Smog
Just two weeks ago we discussed the dismal smog that had closed roads and ariports around Beijing during the recent holiday. The situation has got worse, far worse, since then. As Reuters reports (and the stunning images below show), choking smog all but shut down one of northeastern China's largest cities on Monday, forcing schools to suspend classes, snarling traffic and closing the airport in the country's first major air pollution crisis of the winter. An index measuring PM2.5, or particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5), reached a reading of 1,000 in some parts of Harbin, the gritty capital of northeastern Heilongjiang province and home to some 11 million people. A level above 300 is considered hazardous! China’s leadership is concerned about air quality because it is a constant source of public anger.
Users of China's popular Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblogging site reacted with both anger and bitter sarcasm over Harbin's air pollution.
"After years of effort, the wise and hard-working people of Harbin have finally managed to skip both the middle-class society and the communist society stages, and have now entered a fairyland society!" wrote one user.
Other parts of northeastern China also experienced severe smog, including Tangshan, two hours east of Beijing, and Changchun, the capital of Jilin province which borders Heilongjiang.
The World Health Organisation recommends daily levels of particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers to be no more than twenty. Anything above 300 is considered dangerous. Levels around 1,000 were recorded in some parts of Harbin. All schools were shut and the airport was closed.
Harbin is home to some 11 million people and lies in the northeastern Heilongjiang province of China. Other parts of northeastern China also experienced severe smog.
Visibility has reduced to only around 10 metres causing traffic jams.
China’s leadership is concerned about air quality because it is a constant source of public anger.
The smog is expected to continue for the next 24 hours.
This is the freeway... (spot the cars)
Via CTV,
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Bullish for Canadian real estate.
They would be better off working in a coalmine.
The posters here that like to slam capitalism make me laugh. Look around the world. It's the capitalist countries that're the cleanest. It's the communist countries and dictatorships that're the filthiest. Look at how the lives of the people of Venezuela has "improved" since they went communist. Their national oil company pollutes with impunity. They answer to no one.
I was raised in England and remember the "pea-soup" fogs/smogs in the 1950s and 60s. There would be 3-4 days in a row where you couldn't see across the street. The only vehicles moving were bicycles. We all burned coal to heat our homes.
The Earth survived that assault just fine.
It seems to be human nature to go too far before we smarten-up. But lessons that are learned through adversity are lessons learned well.
We seldom learn from other's experiences; we have to learn from from personal experience.
China is going through a phase right now on their way to a better society. They have already started to clean it up and I'm sure they'll start to see improvements soon.
Remember, it took something like 400 years to clean up the river Thames in London before there were fish in it again.
In all fairness to the Chinese environmental catastrophe... 1.3 billion Chinese today versus 30 million Brits in the 50s... i mean.... Get real. Besides.... Your talking about a British growth process that lasted 100 years.... The Chinese are doing all of that in 20.
Your comparing a tempest in a tea cup to the envelopment of half the Asian landmass. And it's not just China; Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos... Asians are in a real hurry to burn down every single last fucking tree on the planet. Im no tree hugger, but the sheer size of this has to give pause.
I was thinking about our Solar Socialist feedback loop our govts have created, they export Crony Socialist green energy, and we export pollution and debt and capital.
One day soon we'll stop exporting our debt and pollution, and we'll be stuck with our debt and a mountain of E-waste
Pittsburgh used to look like that in the 1950s. They cleaned it up and it's a great place now esp near Carnegie Mellon Uni.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ4K0hHin9s
u.n. ranks china #1 in air pollution - funny
PM 2.5s... Cloths and surgical masks are not going to cut it.
This is the flipside to all those ghost cities.... Massive deforestation, depletion of water resources, disappearing agricultural lands and heavy reliance on coal for cheap power and unnecessary introduction to automobiles to show everyone how wealthy they all are now. If thats progress, you can have it. Enjoy your wealth and Gucci handbags while you choke down on that carbon dust.
This is the flipside to all those ghost cities.... Massive deforestation, depletion of water resources, disappearing agricultural lands and heavy reliance on coal for cheap power and unnecessary introduction to automobiles to show everyone how wealthy they all are now. If thats progress, you can have it. Enjoy your wealth and Gucci handbags while you choke down on that carbon dust.