北京的污染

Time magazine has recently displayed an unusual level of vulgarity by proclaiming the death of French culture and electing Putinium as its man of the year. If it has some relevance to French culture, it is more reminiscent of the Revolutionaries of the Terror who had pioneered the way for the diverse totalitarian regimes that have been plaguing the 20th century and the current one.

The New York Times, on the other hand, has published a lucid article about the pollution in the Olympic city of Beijing. And if you are so satisfied with your technocratic globalized planet, read the last issue of National Geographic on the costs of recycling PCs, monitors, cell phones and Apple trash.

"December 29, 2007Beijing’s Olympic Quest: Turn Smoggy Sky Blue By JIM YARDLEYBEIJING — Every day, monitoring stations across thecity measure air pollution to determine if the skiesabove this national capital can officially bedesignated blue. It is not an act of whimsy: withBeijing preparing to play host to the 2008 OlympicGames, the official Blue Sky ratings are the city’sown measuring stick for how well it is cleaning up itspolluted air.Thursday did not bring good news. The gray, acridskies rated an eye-reddening 421 on a scale of 500,with 500 being the worst. Friday rated 500. Both daysfar exceeded pollution levels deemed safe by the WorldHealth Organization. In Beijing, officials warnedresidents to stay indoors until Saturday, butresidents here are accustomed to breathing foul air.One man flew a kite in Tiananmen Square.For Beijing officials, Thursday was especiallydepressing because the city was hoping to celebrate anenvironmental victory. In recent years, Beijing hassteadily increased its Blue Sky days. The city needsone more, defined as scoring below 101, to reach itsgoal of 245 Blue Sky days this year. These improvingratings are how Beijing hopes to reassure the worldthat Olympic athletes will not be gasping for breathnext August.“We’re definitely hoping for the best,” said Jon Kolb,a member of the Canadian Olympic Committee, “butpreparing for the worst.”For the world’s Olympians, Beijing’s air is aperformance issue. The concern is that respiratoryproblems could impede athletic performance and preventrecords from being broken. For the city’s estimated 12million residents, pollution is an inescapable healthand quality-of-life issue. Skepticism about thevalidity of the Blue Sky ratings is common. Moreover,the concern is whether the city can clean itself uplong after the Games are over. Beijing has long ranked as one of the world’s mostpolluted cities. To win the Games, Beijing promised a“Green Olympics” and undertook environmentalinitiatives now considered models for the rest of thecountry. But greening Beijing has not meant slowing itdown. Officials also have encouraged an astonishingurbanization boom that has made environmental gainsseem modest, if not illusory. Beijing is like an athlete trying to get into shape bywalking on a treadmill yet eating double cheeseburgersat the same time. Polluting factories have been movedor closed. But auto emissions are rising as the cityadds up to 1,200 new cars and trucks every day. Dirty,coal-burning furnaces have been replaced, lowering thecity’s sulfur dioxide emissions. But fine-particlepollution has been exacerbated by a staggeringcitywide construction binge that shows no signs ofletting up.China’s unsolved riddle is how to reconcile fasteconomic growth with environmental protection. ButBeijing’s Olympic deadline means the city needs animmediate answer. The ruling Communist Party envisionsthe Games as a public relations showcase and isleaving no detail untended. Scientists arecross-breeding chrysanthemums to ensure that flowersbloom in August.Now Beijing is also going to try to manipulate airquality. For months, scientists have treated the citylike a laboratory, testing wind patterns andatmospheric structure, while pinpointing local andregional pollution sources. Olympics contingency planshave been approved for Beijing and surroundingprovinces. Details are not public, but officials havediscussed shutting down factories and restrictingtraffic during the Games. “We are determined to ensure that the air conditionsmeet the necessary standards in August 2008,” Liu Qi,president of the Beijing Organizing Committee for theGames, told the International Olympic Committee’sexecutive board this month.Beijing residents overwhelmingly support the Games andtake for granted that officials will do what isnecessary to ensure clean air. Last August, the cityremoved a million cars from roads during a four-daytest intended to gauge pollution and traffic. Butpeople also know that any emergency measures have alimited shelf life.“Yes, I heard about it,” said an engineer at onefactory that may temporarily be shut down. He refusedto identify himself because he was criticizinggovernment policy. “It is like you invite some gueststo your home, and hide all your children underneaththe bed to make the house look nicer. If all thepolluting factories are shut down for the Olympics,there will be a major pollution outbreak afterwardwhen all the factories restart, right?”Beijing officials say the Olympics will have a lastingand positive environmental legacy on the city.International Olympic Committee officials acknowledgethat air quality remains a problem, but they say theair would be far worse without improvements made forthe Games. “The general trend is improvement,” saidSimon Balderstone, an environmental adviser for theI.O.C.But pollution is expected to remain a major, long-termchallenge as Beijing’s population may eventuallyexceed 20 million people. Scientists also say the citywill never be able to clean itself up if surroundingindustrial provinces are not cleaned up, too. Blue skies, in other words, will remain a challenge.Growth Offsets GainsIn July 2001, Beijing won the right to serve as thehost of the 2008 Games, a victory that carried a touchof vindication. Eight years earlier, the InternationalOlympic Committee had rejected Beijing’s first bid fora variety of reasons, including the city’s pollutedenvironment. This time, Beijing organizers promised a “GreenOlympics.”“Beijing has come a long way since its last bid in1993,” said Wang Wei, a senior Beijing Olympicsofficial, speaking at the city’s final Olympicpresentation in Moscow in 2001. “The city has takengiant steps to fight pollution caused byindustrialization and economic growth.”Beijing’s environmental program had begun in 1997 andbecame the centerpiece of the city’s Olympicenvironmental commitments. Urban sewage treatment hasdoubled since 2001. Use of natural gas has jumped38-fold as city officials have converted thousands ofdirty coal-fired furnaces and boilers. Factories havebeen shut down or relocated to the suburbs. Millionsof trees have been planted.“For many years, the city had few environmentalrules,” said Mr. Balderstone, the I.O.C. environmentaladviser, who regularly consults with Beijingofficials. “It’s like they are playing catch-up on alot of these measures.”But Beijing’s Olympic bid also intensified a stunningurban boom. Since 2000, Beijing’s gross domesticproduct has jumped 144 percent, according to BeijingOlympic officials. New office buildings and apartmenttowers seem to rise every week. More than 1.7 billionsquare feet of new construction has been started since2002, most of it unrelated to the Olympics. Cleaner Coal, but More of ItThe emerging cityscape is often dazzling, but alsoenergy intensive and polluting. Beijing now requiresfactories and power plants to burn cleaner, low-sulfurcoal, but it had also hoped to reduce overall coalconsumption in the years before the Olympics. Instead,the city’s coal consumption peaked at 30 million tonslast year. Beijing also has only one office tower thatqualifies under international and national energyefficiency standards as a green building.Construction, meanwhile, is expected to continue at arapid pace.“I think there will be another 20 to 30 years ofurbanization,” said Wu Weijia, a professor at TsinghuaUniversity’s Institute of Urban Studies. “The scale ofconstruction in Beijing will not slow down after theOlympics.”Meanwhile, an explosion of car ownership has wroughtgridlocked traffic and a halo of auto fumes. Beijingnow has more than three million vehicles and is addingmore than 400,000 new cars and trucks each year. Thecity’s reliance on cars and trucks leaves its air withfew reprieves. As in other Chinese cities, heavytrucks can only enter at night. Diesel exhaust is sosevere that Beijing’s levels of PM 2.5, a tinyparticulate deemed potentially harmful to health, ishighest between midnight and 3 a.m., according to onesurvey. Beijing is fighting auto pollution by institutingChina’s highest vehicle emissions standards. Nearly79,000 new taxis with lower emissions have replacedolder, outdated models. But Beijing has been unwillingto discourage private car ownership by institutingexorbitant fees as Shanghai has done. Depending on thecar, license plates in Shanghai can cost as much as$7,000; as a result, Shanghai adds about one-fourth asmany cars per year as Beijing.Beijing’s problems are compounded because its publictransportation system was neglected for years. Now,the city is expanding subway lines and finishing arail line from the airport to downtown, but carownership is expected to keep rising.“If you discourage people from having a car, thepublic transportation system would be overburdened,”said Mr. Wu, the Tsinghua professor.Taking Pollution’s MeasureMr. Kolb, the Canadian Olympic official, spent much ofAugust in Beijing trying to answer the questionhanging over the city as the Games approach: Has airquality actually improved?An environmental physiologist, Mr. Kolb visitedseveral stadiums, and sneaked into a few others, tomeasure pollution with a small monitoring device. OnAug. 5, his measurement of fine particles pollution,or PM 10, reached 200, roughly four times above thelevel deemed safe by the World Health Organization.“We’re worried,” Mr. Kolb said. Of Beijing airpollution, he added: “There’s no doubt about it. It’soff the charts.”A decade ago, Beijing introduced the Blue Sky programto measure sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and PM 10.Under the system, monitors take regular readings ofeach pollutant and then calculate a 24-hour averagefor each. The daily Blue Sky rating is determined bywhichever pollutant has the highest 24-hour average. For China’s authoritarian government, the systemrepresented a breakthrough. But it is less stringentthan air-quality indexes in the United States. Indeed,a day that rates “good” in Beijing would usually berated polluted in the United States. In 1998, Beijing recorded only 100 Blue Sky days. Eachensuing year, the city has improved the number untilreaching the current 244 and pending. Cleaner coal hashelped reduce sulfur dioxide by 25 percent since 2001.Nitrogen dioxide is also down. But Beijing’s biggestproblem is PM 10 and other particulates, which areattributed to construction, industry and cars.Average daily levels of PM 10 exceed national andW.H.O. standards. In 2004, the concentration ofairborne particulates in Beijing equaled that of NewYork, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago and Atlantacombined, according to the United States Embassy inBeijing. Earlier this year, a report by the UnitedNations Environment Program concluded that “airpollution is still the single largest environmentaland public health issue affecting the city.”“Particularly worrying are the levels of smallparticulate matter (PM 10) in the atmosphere, which isseverely deleterious to public health,” the reportstated. The Blue Sky system sets a maximum rating of 500,meaning that on the worst days the actual pollutionlevel could be even higher. “Good” air in Beijing isany Blue Sky rating below 101. But even good air isoften not very good; this year, Beijing has had 65days that rated between 95 and 100. That bulge justinside the break point has attracted attention on Websites and even at one foreign embassy, which compileda statistical analysis casting doubt on the Blue Skyresults, though the embassy’s officials refuse todiscuss the findings.Du Shaozhong, deputy director of Beijing’sEnvironmental Protection Bureau, said the ratings werenot manipulated. “People used to ask me if the ratingsare scientific, or if we are playing any tricks,” Mr.Du said. “But this is most advanced equipment in theworld.”Mr. Kolb said Olympic athletes were worried aboutozone, which can inflame the respiratory tract andmake it more difficult to breathe. But Beijing’smonitoring system does not measure ozone, nor does itmeasure the finer particulates known as PM 2.5.This year, a team of Chinese and American scientistsanalyzed air quality issues for the Olympics and foundthat Beijing’s daily concentrations of PM 2.5 ratedanywhere from 50 percent to 200 percent higher thanAmerican standards. Their study, published in thejournal Atmospheric Environment, also found that ozoneregularly exceeded levels deemed safe by Americanstandards. Studies are under way to assess the health impact ofpollution in Beijing. One 2003 study warned that airpollution could be a major contributor to prematuredeaths related to chronic pulmonary disease,especially in the winter. Another study showed thatvisits to hospital emergency rooms rose on days withhigher pollution levels. On a recent afternoon at Beijing Hospital, Dr. Li Yi,a respiratory specialist, said he now saw 50 patientsa day for respiratory problems compared with abouthalf that a decade ago. He said asthma cases hadincreased sharply, as had the number of patients withnonsmoking-related lung cancer.“You can’t say that pollution is the only reason,” Dr.Li said. “But nonsmoking-related lung cancer is nowincreasing more quickly.”Beyond the OlympicsIn August, Beijing marked the one-year countdown tothe Games with a celebration at Tiananmen Square andseveral test competitions at different sites. JacquesRogge, president of the I.O.C., applauded Beijing’spreparations, but also cautioned that pollution mightforce the postponement of some endurance sports. Hu Fei, director of the Institute of AtmospherePhysics in Beijing, said any concern was misplaced.“Don’t worry about the Olympics,” Mr. Hu said,expressing confidence that contingency plans wouldproduce clean air for the Games. “We need to beconcerned about the long term.”Mr. Hu said finding a long-term fix is difficultbecause of Beijing’s geography. Surrounded bymountains on three sides, Beijing depends on strongwinds to disperse pollution. Yet winds also drawpollution into the city. The study in AtmosphericEnvironment estimated that as much as 60 percent ofozone detected at the National Stadium could be tracedto outside provinces.“Beijing is a pollution source itself, and it issurrounded by other pollution sources,” Mr. Hu said.“When you have wind, it brings in pollution from othersources. When you don’t have wind, the local pollutioncannot disperse.”Xu Jianping, 55, a business consultant, does not needto be told that Beijing is overrun with cars andconstruction. He is an avid in-line skater who enjoyedskating to work until pollution left him spitting outblack phlegm. He went online and ordered a gas mask.“But I don’t want to wear it,” said Mr. Xu, fearinghis mask would be misinterpreted as a protest againstthe Olympics. “It would hurt China’s image.”So until the Games are over, Mr. Xu is taking the busto the office. He plans to vacation outside the cityduring the Games. Then, when life in Beijing returnsto normal, he plans to resume skating to work — withhis mask, if necessary.Zhang Jing, Ma Yi and Huang Yuanxi contributedresearch."