Ed Driscoll » Air Pollution in Beijing Goes Off the Index; Thomas Friedman Hardest Hit
By Ed Driscoll On January 13, 2013 @ 7:36 pm In Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal,Liberal Fascism,Oh, That Liberal Media!,The Assault On Reason,The Future and its Enemies,The Gulag Archipelago,The Return of the Primitive
Past performance is no guarantee of future results:
So how’s that green revolution working out in China? Perhaps the key phrase in Friedman’s 2009 rant is “clean our clock” — good look even seeing a clock in Beijing right now:
And, by the way, Wolf, you know who’s not debating this nonsense at all? China. China’s not debating this at all. They know their glaciers are melting. They know something’s happening. And you know what they’re trying to do? They’re trying to clean our clock in solar, wind, [unintelligible], because they know it’s happening. They’re not caught up in this idiot debate, and that’s where we should be.– The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, in a December 2009 interview with Wolf Blitzer, shortly after the infamous “Hide the Decline” ClimateGate scandal broke.
So how’s that green revolution working out in China? Perhaps the key phrase in Friedman’s 2009 rant is “clean our clock” — good look even seeing a clock in Beijing right now:
People refused to venture outdoors and buildings disappeared into Beijing’s murky skyline on Sunday as the air quality in China’s notoriously polluted capital went off the index.And, at the risk of extending this metaphor to its breaking point, the clock is ticking on China’s demographic time bomb:
The Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center said on its website that the density of PM2.5 particulates had surpassed 700 micrograms per cubic meter in many parts of the city. The World Health Organization considers a safe daily level to be 25 micrograms per cubic meter.
PM2.5 are tiny particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in size, or about 1/30th the average width of a human hair. They can penetrate deep into the lungs, so measuring them is considered a more accurate reflection of air quality than other methods.
The Beijing center recommended that children and the elderly stay indoors, and that others avoid outdoor activities.
As China’s population ages, scholars and officials are seriously considering proposals to phase out the one-child policy that is beginning to curb the flow of new workers into the economy, as well as raise retirement ages (currently 60 for men, 5 or 10 years earlier for women). But such adjustments are just as politically difficult in China as in in Western democracies because, as it turns out, not wanting to work longer is a widely held preference. Many Chinese also view the relatively early retirement age as a way to make vacancies for the millions of young people who enter the labor market each year. If older workers continue working into their twilight years, young workers may encounter greater difficulty in trying to find employment. This would pose its own issues for the country.-go to link-
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