Beijing Clears the Air For the '08 Olympics
With air quality so toxic that Olympic athletes plan to train outside the city, with its international reputation for peace, love and harmony on show for the entire world, Beijing knows it has to clean up its act. The Beijing News (via the New York Times) reports that city officials want to de-smog the world's most polluted urban atmos by cutting its motorized traffic in half. (That's up from the one-third target that TTAC's Adrian Imonti reported back in August.) To that end, the government is considering implementing the number plate restrictions trialled last summer. The move should take about 1.65m vehicles off Beijing's roads each day during the Games. As you might expect from a military dictatorship, the Powers that Be in the People's Republic of China (PRC) are contemplating other, equally draconian corrective measures. The Old Gray lady reports that the PRC may also shut down factories throughout northern China during the Games. Paycheck? What paycheck? Gone, in the name of Citius, Altius, Fortius.
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Yes damaging the environment only matters when non-utopian, capitalist countries do so and when the damage is caused by polution you can't see or easily measure.
OverheadCam9000-Well, there's a reason Kyoto was voted down in the US Senate 95-0 (well, it was a non-binding vote on a "Sense of the Senate" resolution, but the main complaint was exactly this-that China and India and the rest of the developing world got a pass).
I don't know the details on China vis-a-vis Kyoto but India recently pledged not to emit more CO2 per person than we do.
Speaking of CO2 emissions . . . another useless fact David Beckham emits about 19 times more CO2 per year than the average person Last year, he flew more miles by airplane that it would take to fly to the moon and back.