Among any number of other issues, China is not know for its healthy environment. Polluted air, polluted water, lack of water, increasing car ownership, functionally unregulated industry — you name it and there’s probably a damning news article about its manifestation in China somewhere.
I had been living in the Emerald City, in a blue-green state, where recycling is matter of fact and if you can’t see the tops of the skyscrapers downtown, it is raining. Now I’m in Beijing, and buildings are obscured by pollution regularly. On Saturday, Beijing checked in at 72 on the Air Pollution Index. Last weekend it rained for two days and has been fairly windy, so the particulate matter has been knocked down, and the smog blown away. This morning, though, the wind has died down and the haze is closing in again.
72. What does the number mean, exactly? The API is calculated from reports on air quality from different stations around the city and the region, and considers levels of inhalable particulates, sulfur dioxide and nitrous dioxide, plus carbon monoxide and ozone in miligrams per cubic meter. The World Health Organization considers 50 to be a safe number. For Beijing, an API number below 100 makes it a ‘Blue Sky Day,’ and it isn’t until 101 that the State Environmental Protection Agency recommends that “the cardiac and respiratory system patients should reduce strength draining and outdoor activities.” Up to 200 is still only “light pollution.” With a sandstorm, the API can reportedly go to 300 or higher, as it did in mid-March, before we arrived. Or, in December, 2006, it was over 500.
Beijing has a target number of ‘Blue Sky Days,’ 70% in 2008. To meet the targets, there is a multi-layered approach: nearly the entire taxi fleet has been replaced with Hyundai Elantras, the city’s environmental agency has been encouraging drivers to give up one day of driving a month, factories have shut down (more will be shut down in July, and remain out until the Olympics are done), and monitoring stations in the places with consistently bad air ratings have been taken offline (or not?). Maybe it is simplest, and cynicalest, to simply consider the number an indicator of how likely you are to get cancer, or have decreased life expectancy due to prolonged exposure. Though, really, who am I to comment? Is criticizing China’s environment racist? I think I’d place myself alongside James Fallows, on that one.
When we visited the Great Wall last weekend, the haze was very much in evidence. On the way back, I asked Alex’s colleague, who had very kindly taken us out there, what his opinion was on the environmental problems, and the more recent moves to rein in industry and improve environmental quality. His answer was simple — the Communists might not be very good, but they don’t want to kill everyone, so therefore they will take real action on the environmental problems. This seemed logical, and I hope it is true. The same fellow, though, is soon to be a father, and asked Alex to buy some cans of baby formula while he was in San Francisco, as he is mistrustful of the domestic options.
For myself, I don’t think there’s any way to get around the large portion of responsibility that the West should bear, in regards to the Chinese environment. Though the domestic factors are not small, a lot of the pollution is industrial in origin. And everyone knows what Chinese industry produces — cheap goods for Western markets. They make all the things we used to produce domestically, until we devised our own environmental regulations, and our own workers started requiring health plans and such. So we outsourced our environmental problems, and cleaned up our own environment, but at the cost of other places on the globe.
That’s my Great White Guilt.
In consideration of all the above — green lifestyle in the US, awareness of environmental issues here (and I didn’t even go into water), and Great White Guilt, one of the things I think about here is how to live best and greenest. The most concrete thing I can think of is taking fewer, shorter showers. And the grocery store (really a French chain, soon to be boycotted in relation to the Olympic torch debacle) has an understated campaign about reusable bags, so Alex got one of those.
But how to balance other aspects? Is it better to eat street food (little infrastructure involved in its preparation, but probably contains all the tasty things from the air and street) or restaurant food (bought and cooked in bulk, but eaten with disposable chopsticks?) or to cook and eat at home (my US solution, but I have a limited kitchen, and a limited ability to identify or find necessary ingredients)? Better to walk, or to bike, or to take a taxi (is the air inside a taxi somewhat filtered, compared to outside? is it supporting the local economy?) Is it better to buy food from the grocery store, with some presumable quality control, or to buy it on the street and practice language skills? Should I let Alex try to take his button-up work shirts to a dry-cleaner, or should one of us figure out how to iron them? Is there any way to recycle bottles? Does someone down the line pick through the hotel trash and glean out the reusable bits? What about composting? What can I say or do when I see people littering in the streets? Do the air filter masks that many people on the street wear have a positive health benefit?
What can one foreign white girl do in a city of nearly 18 million?
