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Li Feifan discusses his 40-minute documentary Future Armageddon, screened on Chinese TV via guardian.co.uk
In the news lately has been the extraordinarily bad conditions of Beijing's air, or as some are calling it, "airpocalypse". The city recently went way, way, way off the charts for air pollution and officials are now looking at how to reign in the causes of such incredible pollution.
The Guardian reports, "One week after that chart-busting Saturday, Beijing proposed new measures to combat pollution, including increased fines for excessive vehicle emissions and factory shutdowns on particularly bad days. But experts say the sheer scale and diversity of the pollution's underlying causes means that Beijing residents may not be able to breathe freely for decades."
One resident, Li Feifan, hopes to bring the issues directly to the public view with a new 40-minute documentary showing the flat-out frightening conditions of air within the city. He is hoping a visual presentation of the damage being done will spur residents to change their ways.
A baby is given nebuliser therapy at Beijing Children's Hospital as the capital is hit by record-breaking air pollution. Photograph: Li Wen/Xinhua Press/Corbis via guardian.co.uk
Record-breaking pollution in Beijing and other environmental problems in China are the result of unchecked government power, one of the country's former top environment officials has said.
On 12 January, Beijing's pollution hit a nauseating 755 on a US Environmental Protection Agency-designed 0-500 scale. Below 25 is considered the safe daily level by the World Health Organisation. Stores sold out of anti-pollution face masks, flights were delayed and hospital respiratory wards were overrun with coughing patients. Internet users called it the "airpocalypse".
"I have to admit that governments have done far from enough to rein in the wild pursuit of economic growth, and failed to avoid some of the worst pollution scenarios we, as policymakers, had predicted," Qu Geping, a top environmental protection administrator from 1987 to 1993, told the South China Morning Post.
Qu said that Chinese authorities could have pre-empted the crisis by adhering to a 1983 policy "stipulating that economic and urban construction should synchronise with environmental protection". Yet they haven't, and the country's air, water and soil continue to deteriorate. "Why was the strategy never properly implemented?" he said. "I think it is because there was no supervision of governments. It is because the power is still above the law."
One week after that chart-busting Saturday, Beijing proposed new measures to combat pollution, including increased fines for excessive vehicle emissions and factory shutdowns on particularly bad days. But experts say the sheer scale and diversity of the pollution's underlying causes means that Beijing residents may not be able to breathe freely for decades.
Deborah Seligsohn, an expert on China's environment at the University of California, San Diego, said that there is no silver bullet for the country's air pollution. The underlying causes are dynamic and diverse: power plants, small factories, automobile emissions, rampant construction, farmers burning coal for heat. "One of the things about the air quality in Beijing is that it varies a lot more than it used to," she said.
Beijing's air quality fluctuates with the weather – a strong wind from the north can blow the smog to sea, she said, while south-eastern winds trap the air against a nearby mountain range, drowning the city in a pea-soup haze.
The Guardian writes, "Li Feifan discusses his 40-minute documentary Future Armageddon, screened on Chinese TV this week. It features multiple images of the same city skyline submerged in different levels of smog. Li spent two months filming in the city, including earlier this month when pollution levels were 30 to 45 times above the recommended safety levels."
Air pollution isn't only bad in Beijing. A NASA chart revealing poor air quality across the middle east and Asia.
A haze engulfing buildings in Wuhan, China. Air pollution is believed to be the main cause of global dimming. Photo courtesy: STR/AFP/Getty Images
Measurements from the 1960s to the early 1990s, backed up by a wide range of data and a number of independent studies, showed there were substantial declines in the amount of the sun's energy reaching the Earth's surface. This reduction is known as "global dimming".
The observed "dimming" has strong regional differences across the globe. While the southern hemisphere saw modest dimming in the period 1961–90 (which has continued to date), the northern hemisphere saw much more significant declines (reductions of 4–8%). Since then some parts of the world, such as Europe and North America, have seen partial recovery (known as "brightening"), while other regions (most notably China and India) have seen further although regionally mixed declines.
Global dimming is not thought to be due to changes in the sun's luminosity, as these have been too small to explain the magnitude of dimming observed. Instead, air pollution from human activity is thought to be the major contributor. Aerosols which form from pollution can directly reflect and absorb radiation before it reaches the planet's surface and make clouds brighter and longer lasting, meaning they reflect more sunlight.
While we cannot rule out the possibility that natural variations in the Earth's climate (via naturally occurring cloud variations) have contributed to global dimming, the effects are so closely correlated to trends in atmospheric pollution that there is strong evidence to say human activity is a major player. For example, European and North American clean air legislation in the 1990s corresponded to brightening in these regions. By contrast, China and India have seen further dimming, matching pollution increases from rapid industrialisation.
Global dimming is thought to have had a number of substantial impacts. For example, there is evidence to suggest it has masked part of the historical warming caused by greenhouse gases. Indeed, areas that have undergone brightening have seen rapid warming.
Future global dimming changes can be expected to be closely tied to emissions of atmospheric pollution. Another factor which has not played much of a role historically but which may become more significant in the future is the impact of greenhouse gas warming on global dimming. Warming of higher levels of the atmosphere leads to increased atmospheric water vapour, which in turn absorbs some of the sun's energy before it reaches the surface. If future global warming proves to be substantial, widespread dimming by water vapour could be a consequence – though the cooling effect of this would be unlikely to reduce the overall warming trend significantly.
No idea where this is located; but, I just couldn't pass it up. Photo courtesy: wallpaperseek.com
Urban air pollution is set to become the biggest environmental cause of premature death in the coming decades, overtaking even such mass killers as poor sanitation and a lack of clean drinking water, according to a new report.
Both developed and developing countries will be hit, and by 2050, there could be 3.6 million premature deaths a year from exposure to particulate matter, most of them in China and India. But rich countries will suffer worse effects from exposure to ground-level ozone, because of their ageing populations – older people are more susceptible.
Even the Big Apple (New York, NY) is barely visible under a cloak of smog. Photo courtesy: Wikipedia
The warning comes in a new report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which is a study of the global environmental outlook until 2050. The report found four key areas that are of most concern – climate change, loss of biodiversity, water and the health impacts of pollution.
If current policies are allowed to carry on, the world will far exceed the levels of greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are safe, the report found. "I call it the surrender scenario – where we would be if governments do nothing more than what they have pledged already?" said Simon Upton, environment director at the OECD. "But it could be even worse than that, we've found."
The view of smog covering central London, UK from Hampstead Heath in April 2011. Photo courtesy: Matt Dunham/AP via guardian.co.uk
The report said that global greenhouse gas emissions could increase by as much as half, as energy demand rises strongly, if countries fail to use cleaner forms of energy. Water demand is also likely to rise by more than half, and by 2050 as much as 40% of the global population is likely to be living in areas under severe water stress. Groundwater depletion would become the biggest threat to agriculture and to urban water supplies, while pollution from sewage and waste water – including chemicals used in cleaning – will put further strain on supplies.
However, the OECD study also said that there are some actions that governments can take quickly to tackle some of the key problems. For instance, many governments treat diesel fuel for vehicles differently than petrol for tax purposes, with tax breaks that encourage the take-up of diesel. But although diesel vehicle fuel produces lower greenhouse gas emissions than petrol, it is far worse for spewing out small particulate matter, which is bad for urban pollution. "In environmental terms, there is no reason to give diesel tax breaks over petrol," said Upton.
Beijing, China, which is one of the countries likely to be worst hit by pollution-triggered deaths in coming decades. Photo courtesy: David Gray/Reuters via guardian.co.uk
Governments could also remove other environmentally harmful subsidies, such as fossil fuel subsidies and subsidies for water that encourage irresponsible use of the resource. Biofuels are another potential danger area, because although they can emit less carbon than conventional fossil fuels, they also contribute to reducing biodiversity and put further strains on water use, so governments should consider carefully whether to go down the biofuels road, Upton warned.
Upton said that if governments took action now, and developed long-term views of these environmental problems, it would give them a much greater chance of avoiding the worst outcomes. "The key thing is that these four biggest problems are interconnected – biodiversity is affected by climate change and land use, water is linked to health problems, for instance. You can't solve any one of these in isolation. So to be effective, governments have to focus on all of these four and look very closely at the connections between them," he said.
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