送交者: xj 于 2005-11-21, 22:53:23:
偶在这给你认个错。：－）
最新的ＬＡＮＣＥＴ上发了个社评，说欧洲的ＳＰＡＣＥ ＳＡＴＥＬＬＩＴＥ评估下来北京是全球污染最严重的首都。三天之中有一天是雾天。
罪魁祸首是汽车。倒是和早年的洛杉矶烟雾有点象。
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China: the air pollution capital of the world
Jonathan Watts
Available online 18 November 2005.
Over 400 000 premature deaths a year in China are blamed on air pollution levels. The issue is causing growing alarm. But while public awareness has helped convince the government to embrace eco-friendliness, implementing new policies is proving hard. Jonathan Watts reports.
When Beijing was bidding for the 2008 Olympics, its municipal leaders confidently promised the world a “green games”, which would set a new standard for environmental management. But with fewer than 3 years to go, the city has been awarded an embarrassingly different accolade: the air pollution capital of the planet.
Satellite data has revealed that the city is one of the worst environmental victims of China's spectacular economic growth, which has brought with it air pollution levels that are blamed for more than 400 000 premature deaths a year.
According to the European Space Agency, Beijing and its neighbouring north-east Chinese provinces have the world's worst levels of nitrogen dioxide, which can cause fatal damage to the lungs.
Alarm about the perilous state of the environment has gathered pace in recent years. China is the world's second-largest producer of greenhouse gases, acid rain falls on a third of its territory, and the World Bank has warned it is home to 16 of the planet's 20 most air-polluted cities.
According to the European satellite data, pollutants in the sky over China have increased by about 50% during the past 10 years. Senior officials warn that worse is still to come. At a recent seminar, Zhang Lijun, deputy director of the environmental protection agency, said that pollution levels could more than quadruple within 15 years unless the country slows the rise in energy consumption and car use.
A recently published study, conducted by the Chinese Academy on Environmental Planning, found that a third of China's urban residents were exposed to harmful levels of pollution. More than 100 million people live in cities where the air reaches levels considered “very dangerous”.
In a survey of 341 major cities in China in 2003, the academy found that 27% suffered from serious pollution, 32% had light pollution, and 41% enjoyed good air quality.
The academy blamed air pollution for 411 000 premature deaths—mostly from lung and heart-related diseases. The World Bank had earlier estimated the toll at 400 000 deaths.
“It's a conservative figure. The real figure could be higher”, Wang Jin'nan, a chief engineer of the academy, told the AFP news agency. “These figures all exist, but the local governments do not want us to reveal them.” Asked for an interview with The Lancet, academy officials declined, saying the matter was “too sensitive”.
The political implications of worsening pollution are becoming more apparent. Although it does not publish figures on the link between pollution and health, the government admits that respiratory diseases are the leading cause of death in China. Smog is blamed for sharp rises in cases of bronchitis, pulmonary fibrosis, tuberculosis, and lung cancer.
Such health concerns, particularly regarding cancer and birth defects thought to be caused by chemical factories, have been a major factor in a recent wave of protests. Among the latest was the demonstration last month by hundreds of people living in a Beijing suburb against plans to build a factory in their neighbourhood. But similar outbreaks are occurring nationwide on an almost weekly basis.
Beijingers do not need warnings from meteorologists to judge how bad the smog has become. All they have to do is count how many skyscrapers disappear from the skyline. On a day of average haze, some of the more distant tower blocks fade from view. During the worst periods, every building in this city of 14 million people seems to melt into the grey air. Look out of any window at such times and it is only the ghostly outline of the closest buildings that distinguishes the landscape from that of the Gobi desert during a storm.
All too frequently, the Meteorological Bureau grades the air quality as hazardous to human health. According to the Xinhua news agency, at such times the municipal government advises elderly and sick residents not to go outside. After a particularly bad build-up of smog last year, highways had to be closed and a planned air show for visiting French president Jacques Chirac had to be cancelled.
Such days are supposed to be getting fewer. Over the past 5 years, the Beijing municipal government has spent 67 billion yuan (£4·5 billion) relocating some of the dirtiest factories, tightening rules on sulphur emissions, and introducing a fleet of electric and gas-fuelled buses. But, if anything, the problem is getting worse. According to the state-run media, smog affected the city more than 1 in every 3 days this year and last year.
As with so many other policies relating to the environment in China, the problem is not central government policies and statements—which are increasingly eco-friendly—but their implementation in an economy where short-term profit growth takes priority over all else.
Take the sulphurous yellow air in Beijing. Despite efforts to clean up several of the old sources of pollution—notably the low-grade coal that heats homes in the old hutong alleyways—the authorities have embraced millions of new eco-villains: cars.
The environmental protection agency estimates that road vehicles are responsible for 70% of the sulphur in Beijing's air. But the fast-growing auto industry is a major engine for economic development so the city's authorities have resisted the tougher measures taken by Shanghai to restrict sales of new vehicles. In the past 5 years, the number of cars on the capital's roads has more than doubled to 2·5 million. By 2008, it is expected to pass the 3·5 million mark.
This situation is not unique to Beijing. Frequent dirty grey skies are taken for granted in Shanghai, Wuhan, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong. And these eyesores are rapidly becoming one of China's major exports. The US Environmental Protection Agency told The New York Times that 25% of the particulate matter in the skies above Los Angeles on certain days can be traced to China.
Water has suffered the same fate as air. Increasingly likely to be exploited for dams and dumpsites, it is estimated that three-quarters of the rivers running through Chinese cities are so polluted that they cannot be used for drinking or fishing. The Yellow River—seen as the cradle of Chinese civilisation—is testimony to unsustainable development. Once the country's second biggest source of fresh water, the river is now so polluted that 70% is hazardous to drink, and so over-exploited that it dries up before it reaches the sea for a third of the year. Even the mighty Yangtze—the third biggest river in the world—is struggling to sustain the 400 million people who live in its delta. In the past 25 years, 46 major dams have either been built or are under construction on the Yangtze or its tributaries. Farmers are increasingly dumping phosphate fertilisers into its waters. And the volume of human waste is rising because of the explosive growth of river traffic and supercities, like Chongqing, on its banks. As a result, this river—which starts off in the Tibetan plateau as some of the purest water in the world—is now reckoned by the World Wildlife Fund to end as the biggest source of marine pollution in the Pacific.
The good news is that the government is not only aware of the problems, but—tentatively—starting to do something about them. The prime minister Wen Jiabao and president Hu Jintao have stressed the need for “balanced development” that takes more account of the environmental costs of economic growth. They are increasingly willing to consult international NGOs and to tolerate the growing number of small domestic groups of green activists. Rafts of new regulations have been announced to curb factory pollution, improve car exhaust emissions, and clean up the waste produced by cities.
But all too often, fine-sounding central government policies are ignored at a provincial or township level, where local officials are more interested in generating revenues.
Compared to a year ago, there are far more stories about the environment in the domestic media, but the consciousness raising has yet to result in a change of priorities. There may be tinkering at the margins, but the national goal is still the same: even if the country has to become filthy as well as rich, the economy comes first.
In 2008, it is quite possible that this authoritarian government will restrict traffic and close factories to ensure blue skies for the month of the Olympics. But it will only be a temporary fix. Unless more drastic measures are taken soon, the health costs of pollution will be paid in China for generations to come.