Only in the most literal of all possible senses. Today was my first big pollution day, and I was sort of bowled over. I spent the whole summer in LA, and nothing there compared to this: the whole place just smelled awful, and the sky was this not clouds but not sun grey, and it felt gross.. but mostly I just haven't had much experience in places where the air tastes bad like this. Part of it is probably that everyone smokes here, and there's a billion people in all the streets (hm... Maybe shouldn't use hyperbole here...), so that's not really about overarching pollution.
Made me appreciate that I'm glad to be here where we haven't had any days like this yet and not somewhere further east where they supposedly get them all the time (though we had decent luck in Shanghai, in part due to rain), and that there are a lot of things that we take for granted at home which we probably shouldn't. Having to choose between clean air and enough food/good shelter/decent clothing isn't something that we need to do.
2 comments:
yeah, and partly the reason why you can enjoy inexpensive goods AND clean air in the States is that many highly-polluting industries open up highly-polluting companies in less developed countries like China where labor is ridiculously cheap and rules against pollution are ridiculously loose. Your complaining about China's environment problem without recognizing that the western world that you come from should take much responsibility for this reality disappoint me. I expect more from you, Robert.
Yimei: I'm sorry if this didn't get that across!! I'm totally with you that Western demand is a significant part (possibly the significant part) of the causes of the pollution here. I wanted to make people realize that the products which used to pollute US cities didn't stop polluting just because they're now "made in China". To me the fact that everything the US is made here and that there's lots of pollution here implies an absolutely clear causation that doesn't need to be spelled out, but you're right I probably should have done it anyway.
The reason people in America/Europe/Japan don't need to choose between those two things is because people in China/India/Mexico/SE Asia/... are making that choice. Rich countries can afford to value their health more than that of poor ones: it's kind of disgusting. And part of the problem is that as long as rich-world demand and rich-world money works on such a different scale from that of developing countries, there's the potential for soooooo much money to be made by the one person with the power to overlook one tiny little rule that even when people put laws into place (like I think they have/are starting to here), they can't be enforced very well, so poor countries have a huge uphill battle in order to stand up to rich-world companies.
What seems to happen (in S Korea I think most recently http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13017724.000-korea-wakes-up-to-the-environment-south-koreas-economy-hasbeen-seen-as-a-model-for-developing-countries-now-the-koreans-are-beingforced-to-question-the-environmental-costs-of-rapid-industrialisation-.html, Japan, Europe, the US) is that once people hit a threshold income level they suddenly can afford to care about the environment and actually clamp down on pollution. Parts of China are probably beyond that threshold; the question is how a huge rural poor population that can immigrate to factories and keep wages down affects this dynamic.
Know that I don't ever mean to come across as disrespectful of this place: literally everything that I've seen here so far has left me impressed and inspired in some way, and it would be in supremely bad form for me to then complain about it in this blog. So I hope that that's not what's coming across, and if it is (like it apparently was here), please let me know so I can adjust the tone.
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