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Our children will pay if we flirt with pollution solution
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Recently Beijing and about one seventh of China have again been choked on heavy smog.
I sent a text message on Monday to inquire after my sister who has been working in Beijing for many years.
She replied: “Heavy pollution, suffering headache and nausea, with blackened expectoration.”
She is negotiating with her employer for the possibility of being posted elsewhere.
In a sense, the life of nearly every Chinese citizen in any international metropolis has been affected by the pervading smog.
Take my son for instance. He has not had many outdoors PE classes since last summer.
The PE teacher would cite either bad air or rain, and those conditions account for most of the days. They have not yet taken any outdoors PE classes since the new term started two weeks ago.
With recent adjustments to the family planning policy, some residents are weighing the pros and cons of having another child, but I wonder if the smog would affect their decision. In a recent interview with China Economic Weekly, a mother in Beijing said she is now in the habit of checking the PM2.5 updates before taking out her two-year-old daughter.
You can imagine her frustration given the conditions in Beijing. “Pediatricians advised that children this age need to have more sunshine and a minimum of two hours of outdoor exercise, but how can that be possible?” she asked.
In the wake of the heavy smog since January 11, nearly 800 children in Beijing have undergone inhaler treatments. On January 14, there were so many children suffering from respiratory diseases or asthma that they had to wait two or three months for an appointment with doctors.
According to a report released by the China Meteorological Administration, last year the number of smog days numbered 36 in central eastern China. That was 27 days more than the average in the past. In Beijing and Tianjin, however, the number exceeded 100.
But in another sense, this enveloping smog’s impact on our life is minimal.
Following a brief respite during the Spring Festival, the rush hour crowds on the Metro are again near stampede levels. This means factories, construction sites and other business activities are revving up again.
The number of cars roaring on the elevated highway by our office buildings have shown no sign of abatement.
As China continues to be automakers’ savior and paradise, and with each Chinese aspiring to move up the social scale by owning a car, the auto industry will continue to be a pillar for sustained growth.
On the face of it, Beijing’s emergency plan to address the air pollution does include putting half of the cars off the road. But so stringent are the conditions for enacting these measures that even the extremely poisonous January air and the current haze spell were not enough to trigger the most stringent measures.
Catch-22 situation
We find ourselves in a Catch-22 situation. Apparently, policy-makers appear more confident in pronouncing bans on barbecues and fireworks.
As a researcher said in an AP report, “When the alert is low, the measures are not effective, but those for the high-level alert are not feasible.” (Ban on cars to ease pollution ‘not feasible’, February 22, Shanghai Daily.)
They are reluctant to take more cars off the road because it can be disruptive Ñ ostensibly on account of the technical difficulty of notifying all drivers, or the burden on public transport, but really because having a car has been so vocally expressed as the symbol of prosperity that it would sound unnatural or outrageous to question cars per se.
As a recent Global Times commentary observes, “Smog management is an acid test of our collective sincerity.”
Big spenders and car owners will continue to sacrifice their children’s future to their trivial needs of vanity or compulsive demands of greed. They will continue to abuse the Earth, and in exploiting the present, let their children pay for their improvidence.
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