EU Considers Legal Action Against UK Over Poor Air Pollution Levels

BEIJING – One of Beijing’s worst rounds of air pollution kept schoolchildren indoors and sent coughing residents to hospitals Monday, but this time something was different about the murky haze: the government’s transparency in talking about it. While welcomed by residents and environmentalists, Beijing’s new openness about smog also put more pressure on the government to address underlying causes, including a lag in efforts to expand Western-style emissions limits to all of the vehicles in Beijing’s notoriously thick traffic.

BEIJING (AP) — Beijing schools kept children indoors and hospitals saw a spike in respiratory cases Monday following a weekend of off-the charts pollution in China's smoggy capital, the worst since the government began being more open about air-quality data.

Fifty years ago I began my undergraduate studies at the University of Leeds in the UK. It is not something I particularly dwell on, but the stories out of Beijing this week, describing the air pollution in the Chinese capital, brought back a memory. The story on CNN notes that visibility in Beijing has been cut to under 200 yards.

Who would have thought that ultra-rapid industrialization, building entire empty cities to goalseek a supply-driven GDP number that has no reflection on demand reality, and ramming an entire country's industrial output into overdrive without any concern for the environmental impact would have a disastrous effect on smog levels. Certainly not China.

Public anger in China at dangerous levels of air pollution, which blanketed Beijing in acrid smog, spread Monday as state media editorials queried official transparency and the nation's breakneck development.

(cc photo by Salim Virji)