Online News

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

Periodically I receive the USCI Talking Points from [email protected]

The January 3 - January 16, 2008 Edition included links to a students’ online magazine called the: “Daily Update”.

One of the reports in particular got my attention as a few hours previous to reading it I was driving North on the 110 and could see our thick pollution at the distance.

There was a connection between my impression of Downtown and the introduction to the article by Ying Jia Huang. I was not able to read the entire article because the link “read the story>>>” send me to another site were I had to have a password. Anyways… The connection was there and I wanted to know more. Yin Jian mentioned that new regulation had been adopted regarding emissions, and that the objective was to have a clearer sky by the Olympics on 08/08/08 in Beijing, and that even metros were being upgraded to encourage people to drive less and share public transportation more.

On Voice of America online news (http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-01-02-voa65.cfm) it was published yesterday that starting January 1, Beijing fuel has to meet the European standards.

The Olympics are a great way for China to show the world the wonders within, but the pollution might blurry what other wise could be seen. There is a comment that makes complete sense and it the mention that the pollution can jeopardize the athletes’ performance during the Olympics.

There is mention also that the worst polluted day in any city around the world, is still better than many on Beijing.

[Anonymous]

This was one outstanding concern of my students the quality of air in Beijing. They sincerely felt that the athlete's health need to be taken into consideration and that all measures should be taken to enhance their wellbeing at all times. They will be glad to know that some steps are being taken to do just that.

[Anonymous]

I too would like to see what really will happen in the air in Beijing for the Olympics as well as what will happen afterwards. I guess that is why I choose to have the students write a report about air quality in places like Beijing for the Olympics. What are they doing about the air now that we can incorporate here and sustain this?

[Anonymous]

My guess is the air in Bejing will probably be pretty good for the Olympics. I would expect the Communist gov. to make such a major effort to limit pollution that it probably will work, but only for the few weeks the Olympics lasts. The greater danger is China's long-term environmental prospects. To judge by other communist countries the prospects are very dim. Although China is not really a "communist" country any more, it still sufferes from the basic feature of communist environmental disaster-since the state basically owns everything no one in particular really cares about any particular resource. In any system with such uncertain property rights the incentive is to exploit everything as fast as possible rather than to care for and conserv anything for the future. The second problem is the lack of any real accountability for actions on the part of state officials. When people finally realized how bad LA's air was in the 1950s people began to demand that politicians do something about it. The response has been far from perfect, but at the same time in some ways surprisingly effective.

So until China starts to privatize land and make politicials accountable to the public China's environmental future is unlikelly to improve much at all. Bejing will be "cleaned up" for the Olympics, but don't try breathing in Bejing again after the Olympics are over.

[Anonymous]

well.. let's hope that the air in Beijing is clean for the Olympics. However, I also see it as a lesson to China and the rest of the world what can be done to clean up the air on specific days or continuously. Even if all pollution ended today in Beijing, the pollution that is currently in the air would take some time to dissipate. Are they going to do something beginning July?

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