What America would look like without the EPA
Pretty much like Shanghai:
That's pollution, not ordinary fog. Beijing doesn't usually look much better. This is your world without environmental regulations.
For the seventh day this month, Shanghai officials have warned children and the elderly to stay inside in a city where 24 hours exposed to the off-the-charts pollution would have hazardous consequences to one’s health. Hundreds of flights and sporting events have been cancelled, while face masks and air purifiers sold out in stores. All week, the pollution level hovered at “heavily” and “severely” polluted, according to Shanghai’s Air Quality Index, at up to 31 times the recommended levels. [...]Since that didn't work so well, Shanghai's "environmental authority took decisive action to address the frequent air-quality alerts: It adjusted standards downward to ensure that there won’t be so many.
Officials have ordered vehicles off the road to curb air pollution, so far removing roughly 30 percent.
That's pollution, not ordinary fog. Beijing doesn't usually look much better. This is your world without environmental regulations.
Labels: Climate Disruption, Corporatocracy, Pollution
posted by Libby Spencer at 1:47 PM
4 Comments:
Other Chinese cities are just as bad, and many are worse. I got sick once, driving from Beijing to the Great Wall. The air was rusty brown.
I remember Chicago in the 50's and the air wasn't much better and we used to laugh at the St Patric's day practice of dying the river green because it already looked like pea soup and stank to high hell. Every thing was covered with soot from burning coal and then Gary, Indiana -- hell on Earth with red skies from the steel mills. I used to need a wet scarf over my face to drive through it.
But of course basic health and safety laws are pure Communism even though Communists don't have them. Being shit all over by industry? Well that's freedom!
I've seen photos of San Francisco where you couldn't see the buildings for the smog. And I remember the stench as you entered New Jersey from some bridge. Forgot what city that was. Not to mention I have a vague recall of rivers catching fire from all the crap being spewed out by factories. "Free market baby" at its finest.
I'd add, to be fair, I did read a recent article while I was googling for this that said Beijing actually had a few days with blue skies and you could the see the city. Not expected to last for long though.
Beijing, like most other cities still has countless homes and larger buildings heated by coal burning stoves. Coal is cheap and dirty.
Yes, when you get a wind off the Gobi, it's clear and so dry my lips cracked and bled. In their collective wisdom they built all sorts of coal burning power plants just upwind of major cities - just as they would here if we didn't have some small measure of protection from corporate greed.
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