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Jeff M
Lv 7
Jeff M asked in EnvironmentGlobal Warming · 7 years ago

What do you think of the China's war on pollution?

In his first annual speech one of the Chinese premier's promises was to curb pollution in the country. he would start by shutting down 50,000 coal fired burners this year and clean up major ones. He also made statements that he would remove six million high emissions vehicles from the roads. I see no mention of how many new plants are currently being built though.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/5/chi...

What do you make of this and how do you think China will change, both pollution-wise and emission-wise, in the coming years?

Update:

C: Thanks for the correction

Update 2:

Note: I did not ask for the differences. I asked for what you thought of the future with regards to these new promises from the Chinese government. This involves such things as SO2, CO2, the Asian Brown Cloud, skeptics complaining that lesser countries did not have the same pollution controls as first world countries, and so on.

10 Answers

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  • Anonymous
    7 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    I agree with Barry. I think it is rather difficult to criticize countries for doing the same thing we did.

    That being said, I think their initiative is doomed for failure. They are coming out of poverty, so they will naturally have more people who can afford cars and need more power that will be supplied by all of the new coal power plants.

    A better method would be to work on emission standards for cars and look towards other source of power like nuclear. They also should start some regulation on the coal power plants to make them less polluting like ours. We still produce the same amount of CO2, but much less of the chemicals that cause smog.

    Saying we are going to take cars off the road and take down power plants just to put more cars on the road and build more coal power plants is not useful.

  • ?
    Lv 5
    7 years ago

    Well the probably have 1/2 billion or more cars so they needed to take steps on that.

    You misquoted slightly it is 50,000 SMALL coal fired furnaces. These are not necessarily more than converting to natural gas or electric. The irony is that China will be building 1 fired coal power plant each week for the next 3 years or more. Not sure how that will help/

    No Problem

    Kano WRONG Burning coal from the start of the industrial revolution and coal fired power plants have done more to cause AGW than any other single thing, It is a horrible pollutant, has caused many people to have respiratory diseases and ten thousand or more miners have died from black lung disease since coal mining started..

  • 7 years ago

    I think China is making the same mistakes the USA made 100 years ago, only China is making them faster. And I think China will learn from those mistakes just like the USA did. And I think they will do that faster too. So they will go from under developed to developed but dirty, to developed and clean(er) in less time than the USA did.

  • Anonymous
    7 years ago

    Chinese premier said that......they are like politicians they lie all the time. They will do no such thing, just playing the Illuminati cards. They know World War 3 is coming so now is a great time for high level politicians across the globe to spread their lies.....because before 2016 the war will be in full gear.....enjoy.....the AGW supporters wanted population control at least they will promise that for you.

    Source(s): Nukes in China and India will clean up your "terrible" pollution as well as eliminate 30% of the population. This war will get you to 350ppm in the next decade.....your work is paying off.
  • Rio
    Lv 6
    7 years ago

    It's a joke: http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-data.cfm?fips...

    That link doesn't detail future speculations from: Canada, Afghanistan, South America, Russia, or America. It's what you don't know that bites.

    I do think China had it's first pending environmental legation from a native solitary citizen. By now He's probably working in a coal mine or dead.

    Source(s): ed: The link answers your question. Its nothing more then simple addition and subtraction after that.
  • Kano
    Lv 7
    7 years ago

    Coal fired furnaces are entirely different from coal fired power plants, furnaces blast smoke and ash into the atmosphere, power plants don't they have electrostatic precipitators and other devices to prevent pollution

  • Andrew
    Lv 7
    7 years ago

    Pretty much same thing as US war on drugs. The stronger the war on drugs there is more drugs. The stronger the war on pollution, there is more pollution.

  • John R
    Lv 6
    7 years ago

    It's kind of like having a peeing section in the pool.

  • ?
    Lv 4
    7 years ago

    Don't knock the Chinese. They are where we were 60 years ago. I can remember the smog. They are struggling out of years of grinding poverty. They will sort out their problems as we will ours. They are coming out of radical communism as we are going into it via the Un-IPCC. At least they are going in the right direction.

  • ?
    Lv 7
    7 years ago

    I think it is about as trustworthy as Putin's promise to not invade the Ukraine. The US pressured Ukraine to give up all of its nukes and reduce its armed forces under the guarantee that we would protect them and Putin also agreed to not attack them if they did. I don't know who is more trustworthy, Putin or Obama or China. Frankly I wouldn't turn my back on any of them.

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