Beijing to Get Busy Scrubbing the Air for Olympics
by Jacob Gordon, Nashville, TN on 04.12.06
With only 800 and some odd days to go until the Beijing Olympic Games, the Chinese government still has plenty of time to sweep some embarrassing problems under the rug. Instead of letting the world see/breathe Beijing’s notorious smog, the city will ban almost 2 million cars in the weeks leading up to the 2008 Olympics.The Chinese government will also shut down factories and power plants and even seed the clouds to induce rain. Despite plans to make the Beijing games carbon neutral and some innovative urban planning, Beijing remains one of the most polluted cities in the world. According to the Guardian, a European Space Agency report has found the Beijing area to have the earth’s highest levels of nitrous oxide. China is home to 16 of the world’s top twenty most polluted cities and is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gasses after the US. :: Guardian
Population of the USA:
298,444,215 (July 2006 est.)
Population of China:
1,313,973,713 (July 2006 est.)
Way to punch above your weight in pollution per capita, America!
I see it more as:
Way to subjugate huge portions of your population and keep them in the stone-age, China!
Not to excuse all pollution in the USA, but it is very easy to pollute less per captita if you effectively deny modern conveniences to huge portions of your population.
A few days ago the US EPA administrator lectured the Chinese SEP (quivalent to USEPA) on the need to clean it up before the olympics were held. From an agency seemingly focused on cutting back regulations this seemed ironic.
I wonder if this experiment in temporary depollution will be the seed of something... I can easily imagine all kind of people (including government officials) who live in the city experiencing clean air and wanting it back even after the olympics are over.
WE'RE NUMBER ONE! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!
GO USA!!!!! WE CAN BEAT ANYONE AT ANYTHING!
It is amazing how everyone thinks it is a simple feat to go from Starvation to "modern Conveniences" I lived in China for 2 years, I have not seen any other country making bigger strides forward in such short time frames.
America grew to power on the back of slavery, NZ and Australia, on the back of stolen resources from the native peoples, and thats just to list three... so easy to forget that we in the first world have our own dirty history, and bad behaviour we should be sorting out before we throw stones.
i find that the reducing the chinese population to be a bad mistake seing as there is the one child policy and people of china would prefer boys than girls (because they thing boys are more impotant) so in 20-50 years the population will be neally gone because there wont be anough girls to repopulate if they all want a boy. so in my opinion they should have 1 child to evbery adult (or two children per family) this will keep it stable. but if they wanted it reduced only make the one child polcy for say about the time it takes to get the right poppulation then change it so there is 2 children per family (1 child to an adult) this will keep it stable again.
p.s i agree with adds