BEIJING — The Chinese government announced an ambitious plan on Thursday to curb air pollution across the nation, including setting some limits on burning coal and taking high-polluting vehicles off the roads to ensure a drop in the concentration of particulate matter in cities.
CHINATOPIX, via Associated Press
The plan, released by the State Council, China’s cabinet, filled in a
broad outline that the government had issued this year. It represents
the most concrete response yet by the Communist Party and the government
to growing criticism over allowing the country’s air, soil and water to
degrade to abysmal levels because of corruption and unchecked economic
growth.
The criticism has been especially pronounced in some of China’s largest cities, where anxious residents grapple with choking smog that can persist for days and even weeks. In January, the concentration of fine particulate matter in Beijing reached 40 times the exposure limit recommended by the World Health Organization.
Environmental advocates, including some at Greenpeace East Asia, said
the plan did not go far enough, while others praised it for at least
acknowledging some of the basic causes of the country’s chronic air
pollution. But there was wide agreement that the ultimate test would
come in how it is carried out and enforced.
Chinese cities suffer from some of the worst air pollution in the world, with outdoor pollution having accounted for 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, according to the 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study.
Increasingly, air pollution is changing everyday life. Face masks are
becoming more ubiquitous in the cities, and some affluent parents
increasingly choose schools more for their air filtration systems than
for their academics. The environment is emerging as a potent political
issue.
For years China has had an array of strict environmental standards on
paper, and its leaders talk constantly about the need to improve the
environment. But enforcement has been lax, and the environment has
continued to deteriorate at an alarming rate.
“The plan successfully identifies the root cause of air pollution in
China: China’s industrial structure,” said Ma Jun, a prominent
environmental advocate. “Industrialization determines the structure of
energy consumption. If China does not upgrade its coal-dependent
industries, coal consumption can never be curbed.” he said. “The key to
preventing air pollution is to curb coal burning — China burns half of
all the coal consumed in the world.”
Under the new plan, concentrations of fine particulate matter must be
reduced by 25 percent in the Beijing-Tianjian-Hebei area in the north,
20 percent in the Yangtze River Delta in the east and 15 percent in the
Pearl River Delta in the south, compared with 2012 levels.
All other cities must reduce the levels of larger particulate matter,
known as PM 10, by 10 percent. It is unclear why the plan calls for a
looser standard for other cities, since the fine particulate matter,
known as PM 2.5, is considered deadlier than PM 10 because it can
penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream
The plan said Beijing must also bring its average concentration of PM
2.5 down to 60 micrograms per cubic meter or less. That would be two and
a half times the recommended exposure limit set by the World Health
Organization.
For years, Chinese officials kept measurements of PM 2.5 from the public.
But many Chinese in Beijing turned to a Twitter feed from the United
States Embassy to see the hourly PM 2.5 reading from a monitoring
machine on the embassy rooftop. That, in turn, put pressure on the
government to have cities start releasing their PM 2.5 measurements.
Beijing began reporting PM 2.5 levels in January 2012, and the official
Xinhua news agency has reported that 74 cities are supposed to be
releasing their PM 2.5 data this year.
On Thursday, pollution climbed to levels that the embassy rated “very
unhealthy,” with a PM 2.5 concentration at 10 p.m. at 213 micrograms per
cubic meter. Much of the city’s downtown skyline was obscured by a
thick haze.
Coal consumption has grown rapidly in China, and the plan places only
modest limits on consumption, with coal to account for no more than 65
percent of energy use in 2017, compared with around 67 percent last
year. Some of the plan’s critics said they were disappointed that there
were no specific limits on coal consumption by region. The plan allows
local governments to set those limits on their own.
“Instead of setting a goal to reduce coal burning for each province, the
action plan gives each province the power to set goals for themselves,
which leads to the goals being very conservative,” said Huang Wei, who
works on climate and energy advocacy at Greenpeace East Asia.
The plan addressed vehicle emissions
by removing all high-polluting “yellow label” vehicles that were
registered before the end of 2005 from the roads by the end of 2015. In
the three regions with heavy industry, all such vehicles are to be taken
off the roads by 2015, and the same for all of China by 2017.
In those three regions, gasoline and diesel of a high standard, China V,
will be provided in certain cities. But the plan did not set targets
for new vehicle emissions standards, which some environmental advocates
say is a major omission. “We had been waiting for months for the new
action plan,” Ms. Huang said. “We thought it might be a pivot point in
history. Now it’s here, and we think it has very much fallen short of
our expectations.”
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