02.03.08
Beijing’s Air is Dirty and Polluted
Mul’s recent post on pollution got me thinking a bit. It’s pretty obvious to anyone who comes to Beijing, or any number of places in China, that the air is terrible. A few weeks ago, Steve Andrews released a study, apparently done on his own, claiming that the government had been playing with the pollution numbers:
The study, written by an American environmental consultant, found flaws in Beijing’s “Blue Sky” system of air quality monitoring stations and noted that the city changed its method for measuring pollution in 2006. In particular, officials stopped including readings from two stations in polluted areas and began using readings in three other stations in less polluted locales…
“Irregularities in the monitoring of air quality account for all reported improvements over the last nine years,” said Steven Q. Andrews, the author of the study, in a telephone interview.
I have met Steve once or twice here in Beijing; he seems like a smart and honest guy, and I don’t doubt the veracity of his findings. What’s fascinating to me is how the debate on this topic, especially in the run-up to the Olympics, is focused on the government’s goals of “blue sky days”, the pollution index, etc.
When the pollution here gets bad, you can see it. You can smell it. So why are so many people caught up arguing over numbers with the government? Even by winning this argument, what has been proven, other than that there were a lower number of “blue sky days”? As Steve’s report shows, the numbers were likely fudged to begin with. I can’t see how the government lets pollution stop the Games, and I can’t see any real solution to the pollution problem in the coming years. Beijing alone isn’t the problem; you can find horribly dirty air in many rural areas far from big cities. China’s in trouble, and it’s going to be many years before things get better.
UPDATE: Here’s Steve’s original editorial in the Wall Street Journal.
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