Air pollution is a WORLD problem
Boingboing writes about an article in NY Times, about how pollution from China pollutes the air in the USA:
China is already the world’s second-biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions and is expected to surpass the United States as the biggest. Roughly a third of China is exposed to acid rain. A recent study by a Chinese research institute found that 400,000 people die prematurely every year in China from diseases linked to air pollution.
Nor does China’s air pollution respect borders: on certain days almost 25 percent of the particulate matter clotting the skies above Los Angeles can be traced to China, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Environmental experts in California predict that China could eventually account for roughly a third of the state’s air pollution.
Unfortunately NY Times has a lame subscription system preventing me from reading the actual article, but the excerpt Xeni posted had me think about a few things.
In 1998, the world produced almost 400 quadrillion BTU of energy (BTU – British Thermal Units – is a way to calcualte energy, no matter where it comes from – see wikipedia entry). USA alone consumed about 95 quadrillion BTU of these (several sources, but this is one easy to read).
(continues…)
There are about 6,5 billion people living on earth. And about 260 million in the USA. Every 25th person on earth is an American. Or 4%.
4% of the world population consume 25% of the world energy.
I’m also worried when I read about the increasing pollution from growing economics in the east. And frankly, who am I to talk living in Norway, who spend almost as much energy per person as USA?!
But I find it very ironic that pollution from China over Los Angeles is something that make people see that this IS a problem.
US President Bush recently spoke about global climate chnage, but speech doesn’t help at all. USA and China need to start making real efforts to change. Not signing the Kyoto treaty is a bad start!
Think about it: If every Chinese wanting a car got one, and all of them were huge SUVs… Crazy.
The best thing someone could do to world pollution is to make the poorer countries jump over the bad technology we have used in the West: Cars running on oil, appliances using lots of energy and products containing chemicals that hurt us. Not that I think it will happen… We’re all too greedy for that…
Boingboing should probably also mention that pollution keeps us from seeing the effects of pollution. This is called global dimming, and BBC made an excellent documentary about it. Full Full transcript and more information at BBC.co.uk.
…perhaps the most alarming aspect of global dimming is that it may have led scientists to underestimate the true power of the greenhouse effect. They know how much extra energy is being trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere by the extra carbon dioxide (CO2) we have placed there. What has been surprising is that this extra energy has so far resulted in a temperature rise of just 0.6°C.
This has led many scientists to conclude that the present-day climate is less sensitive to the effects of carbon dioxide than it was, say, during the ice age, when a similar rise in CO2 led to a temperature rise of 6°C. But it now appears the warming from greenhouse gases has been offset by a strong cooling effect from dimming – in effect two of our pollutants have been cancelling each other out. This means that the climate may in fact be more sensitive to the greenhouse effect than thought.
Next time you see the clouds over Los Angeles, think about where they come from…
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