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CHAPTER 13

Air, Water, and Soil Pollution

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China’s rapid economic rise has been accompanied by exceptional levels of pollution.

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In July 2008 the U.S. embassy in Beijing established a new account on the social media site Twitter. Every hour, @BeijingAir reported two measurements made from air-quality sensors installed on the embassy’s roof. One sensor reported the PM 2.5, a measurement of the fine particles emitted from vehicle tailpipes, coal-burning power plants, and other sources, which have been linked to asthma, lung cancer, heart disease, and early death. The second sensor recorded ground-level ozone gas, which is also created from burning fossil fuels and can cause a variety of health problems.

China’s rapid growth and lax emission standards have turned its air into a cough-inducing cloud. To the dismay of embassy staffers, a gloomy yellowish-brown smog usually hangs over the Beijing skyline. The country also suffers from pollution-caused acid rain, which erodes ancient Buddhas and harms natural ecosystems. And unlike in the United States, where the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began monitoring air quality in the 1970s and releases the data to the public, the Chinese government has kept a tight lid on the data it collects. Naturally, Beijing’s residents were curious about the air they were breathing and skeptical of their own government’s rosy proclamations.

Most of the @BeijingAir tweets summarized the pollution numbers using the EPA’s Air Quality Index, which ranges from “Good” to “Hazardous.” On November 19, 2010, however, the ozone sensor maxed out at 500, while the PM 2.5 sensor was off the charts with a reading of 562. “Crazy Bad,” the Embassy tweeted. Chinese officials were incensed by these tweets, declaring the readings illegal and unscientific. They later blocked the data from being republished on local websites.

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“The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water.”

President Richard M. Nixon, in his first State of the Union address, 1970

By that time, however, awareness of the problem was so widespread that the Chinese government was forced to address it. In 2013 the government established its own network of monitoring stations and set aside funds to meet ambitious pollution-reduction targets. In Beijing, officials ordered older vehicles off the road and promoted greater use of clean energy. It closed down small, inefficient, and poorly regulated coal-fired power plants while installing scrubber systems that reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide in larger power plants, one of the culprits behind acid rain. China still has a long way to go to clean up its air—not to mention its water and soils—but we know from other parts of the world that this is an attainable goal, which brings us to the central question of this chapter.

Central Question

How can we control and reduce environmental pollution?