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October 13, 2019

China’s one-party state cleans up air pollution in record time

Skystatement quotes Michael Greenstone and Patrick Schwarz on China's improvements in air quality from 2013 to 2016.

In 2014 Beijing was deemed “almost uninhabitable” for humans. The country was seeing the worst stretches of pollution in its history, with levels hitting 45 times the recommended daily limit. Beijing was the 40th worst city in the world for a small lung-damaging particulate matter known as PM2.5.

For years authorities dismissed the poisonous blanket of pollution as “fog” but the problem grew too big to ignore and in one year the government went from denial to tackling the problem with “an iron fist”.

In 2016 the government set up a Central Environment Protection Inspection to monitor the implementation of local environment laws. For Beijing, $120 billion was set aside to reduce air pollution. Despite immense human suffering, the policies worked. Now people in China can expect to live 2.4 years longer than they did in 2013 and the 20 million people living in Beijing could expect to live 3.3 years longer.

“These improvements in air quality in just four years are truly remarkable by any measure,” according to a report by Michael Greenstone and Patrick Schwarz from the Energy Policy institute at the University of Chicago. “By comparison, it took the United States a dozen years and the vicious 1981-82 recession to achieve similar reductions in air pollution after the enactment of the Clean Air Act in 1970.”

Continue Reading at Skystatement…