US Embassy Categorizes Beijing Air Quality As 'Crazy Bad' 270
digitaldc writes "Pollution in Beijing was so bad Friday the US embassy, which has been independently monitoring air quality, ran out of conventional adjectives to describe it, at one point saying it was 'crazy bad.' The embassy later deleted the phrase, saying it was an 'incorrect' description and it would revise the language to use when the air quality index goes above 500, its highest point and a level considered hazardous for all people by US standards. The hazardous haze has forced schools to stop outdoor exercises, and health experts asked residents, especially those with respiratory problems, the elderly and children, to stay indoors."
Crazy bad.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet if the lasse fair economics crowd would say (Score:4, Insightful)
.. this would be an idea state: no EPA at all, and nothing to work against any company in order to make a profit.
Re:Yet if the lasse fair economics crowd would say (Score:4, Insightful)
.. this would be an idea state: no EPA at all, and nothing to work against any company in order to make a profit.
Way more accurate to say its the ideal fascist state (what the USA is rapidly moving toward) where all the costs (pollution) are socialized and all the benefits (profits) are privatized. They're just a little further along than we are.
Remember when the govt and corps merge, suing a corp for pollution is a great way to get executed as an enemy of the state.
You have us confused... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A Prime Example of Externalized Costs. (Score:3, Insightful)
Much of the savings comes from the ability to operate a factory in China under less stringent rules - less labor protections, less safety, less pollution controls, etc.
Yet some still ignorantly call it "free trade" as if the differences are as small as North vs South Carolina.
Re:Yet if the lasse fair economics crowd would say (Score:5, Insightful)
There is an easy fix. Simply do what the US did. Get rid of all your factories and buy everything from overseas.
Air quality indoors? (Score:1, Insightful)
Where does the air inside come from? I always thought it came from outside. If all the air outside is terribly polluted, then isn't the air inside just as bad? I mean, I don't think most buildings have any serious air filtering, do they?
Re:When will China have their 60's? (Score:5, Insightful)
When will the youth of China decide they've had enough of conformity and respect for authority? China has raised it standard of living in recent decades but they still suffer from a severe lack of basic freedoms, corruption, and choking pollution. The civil rights movement and Vietnam triggered the events of the 60's in the USA. When will the same happen in China?
Basic freedoms have improved, corruption has been far less than I've seen in the US (their former food and drug regulator was found to be taking bribes from pharmaceutical companies, and subsequently executed), and the choking pollution has only been a recent occurrence because of the rapid growth.
The pollution is bad right now, but I think China is in a position to turn that around really quickly. Unlike in the US, they don't have lobbyists from companies creating the pollution who will oppose any and all environmental laws. Of course they don't want pollution, but currently the government is in a tough position of making choices between pollution and slowing down the growth of the country. However, one might note that their pace of growth in renewable energy is torrid. They have been putting a lot of money into wind and solar tech. Plus, they are already way ahead of the game in creating a practical 100% electric car. To me, it seems like sometime in the next 10 years, they will have the ability to switch over, nearly overnight, to clean energy solutions. Without a bunch of opposing interest groups like we have in the U.S., it'll literally be like flipping a switch.
fight! (Score:1, Insightful)
This is what happens when pedantics meet each other.
Re:Yet if the lasse fair economics crowd would say (Score:2, Insightful)
Way more accurate to say its the ideal fascist state (what the USA is rapidly moving toward) where all the costs (pollution) are socialized and all the benefits (profits) are privatized.
That is not fascism.
Remember when the govt and corps merge
If by that you mean that all private business and interest groups are forcibly organized into cartels subservient to the government, then yes, that might be defined as 'fascism'.
Pity they didn't learn from their forerunners (Score:3, Insightful)
If only they'd learned from the negative examples provided by Europe and the USA's journeys through the Industrial Revolution.
Money talks and bullshit walks.
Re:You have us confused... (Score:4, Insightful)
One place where "conservatives" and "libertarians" agree is that the "free market" is better suited to protecting the environment than the government, just as the "free market" is better suited to making sure that everyone has health care or that the "free market" is best suited to making sure crooked securities traders don't cheat old people out of their retirement savings. All this despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It's part of their shared insanity.
Re:China isn't subject to Kyoto restrictions (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that the sort of pollutants the article discusses have little or nothing to do with GHG emissions, right?
People are really stupid. CO2 may cause the planet to warm up, but it certainly won't kill millions by way of lung cancer and other respiratory aliments.
The US (and the west in general) has done an admirable job of eliminating or reducing air borne pollutants. The US is currently debating the merits of managing non-pollutant emissions, such as CO2, the byproduct of "clean coal", natural gas, and other complete oxidization products.
Downplaying the improvements in Western air quality is extremely dangerous, and one only has to tour some of the various polluted hell-holes in the East to truly understand how important clean air is.
Re:A Prime Example of Externalized Costs. (Score:3, Insightful)
"The bad air quality is a prime example of an externalized cost."
This is how capitalism _works_ without any kind of subsidy, corporations always try to dump risk and externalize where they can get away with it. Note the nation debt is a form of corporate control of government allowing them to externalizing cost in the form of national debt.
Another form is offshoring, externalizing costs onto workers in one nation and saddling that nation with all the risk because the jobs aren't coming back and there is no guarantee that new jobs will be created in sufficient enough numbers to offset the losses due to technological advancement and consolidation.
Re:I was at a loss for words (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Better than "Fucking Bad" I guess (Score:1, Insightful)
what the fuck are you talking about. intensifier is a semantic category, adjective is a syntactic category. There's no reason a word can't be both.
either take some linguistics classes to know what your talking about or shut the fuck up.
Re:Better than "Fucking Bad" I guess (Score:2, Insightful)