Chinese car ownership levels have jumped rapidly, driven by the fast increasing middle class. The car’s symbol of freedom and status is rapidly changing in one of the most heavily populated countries in the world, and along with it carries a hefty price: badly congested streets and rising carbon dioxide emissions.
In Beijing, China’s capital, smog levels have gotten so bad that the State Environmental Protection Administration has decided to remove one million cars from the city's streets. The Chinese government announced this week that a partial driving ban would be in place between August 7 and 20 in a hope that Beijing's perpetual smog will disappear. Chinese officials have agreed that the country’s unstoppableindustrial growth has driven its environment to breaking point and is now putting the lives of its people in danger.
By June, Beijing had registered three million vehicles, up from 2.88 million last year and only 1.34 million five years ago, a rise that has helped make the country the world's second-largest vehicle market by sales after the U.S.
A recent report by the World Bank and China's State Environmental Protection Agency found that approximately 394,000 deaths occurred in 2003 from outdoor air pollution in China. The report said the approximate monetary cost of "excess deaths" from such air pollution was 394 billion yuan, or around $52 billion, assuming the value of a "statistical life" to be one million yuan.
Previous government reports have revealed that more than 70 per cent of China’s waterways and 90 per cent of its underground water are contaminated as a result of the pollution.
A previous ban of all government cars earlier this year saw traffic jams ease and blue skies return to the capital.
The city has already reportedly spent more than $15 billion trying to improve its air quality – conducting massive pollution clean-up, moving steel mills, power plants and coal-fired furnaces to the suburbs or beyond, what with the Olympic Games to be hosted there only a year away (August 8-24, 2008).
The situation in Beijing has become so bad that Chinese officials measure the performance of their initiatives by counting how many days of blue skies they have in a year.
The Government says that the efforts are having an impact, with the city last year enjoying 241 “blue-sky” days, compared to fewer than 100 ten years ago.
Despite assurances from the Chinese government however, International Olympic Committee leaders remain apprehensive about the problem, demanding "contingency measures" to contain the pollution threat.
Is this just the beginning of drastic measures to be taken by the chienese government to curb the country's pollution? We’ll just wait and see.
In the meantime better be prepared to replace your BMW with its upgraded BMW 2002 parts with a more environmentally-friendly alternative – the bicycle. If you’re in Beijing, that is.
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Source: http://www.a1articles.com/article_186730_31.html
Source: http://www.a1articles.com/article_186730_31.html