Imagine a world where even the air is toxic. A jaunt in the park is no better than standing amidst factory chimneys, each breath as filthy as second-hand smoke.
Welcome to the reality of pollution. We might normally define it as the introduction of contaminants into an environment, which causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort. But don’t let the almost euphemistic language fool you.
Coal for power, coal for steel, and coal for cement were the mantras revealed in a multimedia presentation by Ian Teh and Panos Pictures. They are the reasons grey ash covers the roads and the air is “acrid and thick” in China’s manufacturing provinces such as Shanxi, Linfen, and the Dongbei rust belt. Dystopic images of bleak horizons and ravaged resources are testimony to economic ambition.
Teh pins an industrial revolution powered by cheap labor as the force building and sustaining China’s explosion, singling out coal as “China’s double edged sword: it is the new economy’s black gold and the fragile environment’s dark cloud.”
Known to cause and exacerbate cancers, progressive lung diseases, and weakened immune systems, pollution-related deaths claim more than 400,000 each year in China, home to sixteen of the world’s twenty most polluted cities.
While China may be the world’s top producer of greenhouse gases, the United States trails a close second, a high ranking status more mortifying than it seems when it was achieved with one quarter of the population.
Not only does the US have a longer legacy of contributing to the world’s pollution, but its current per capita energy use is over five times that of the average Chinese citizen. And in the most recent report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, although coal consumption declined at last count, US coal production hit a record level of 1,171.5 million short tons.
As of last year, six out of ten Americans lived in cities where pollution causes serious health damage, according to the American Lung Association. And a molecule of pollution, no matter what country creates it, becomes everyone’s problem.
In developing countries pollution is a newer priority, if it is at all. It is always second to industrialization, as though it and economic growth were mutually exclusive. Meanwhile, developmental and neurological toxins like the degreaser toluene – common manufacturing pollutants – inhibit children’s neurological development. If the greatest resource of a progressive country is its rising youth, then endemic pollution can condemn societies to a cycle of lower mental capacity and poverty. If the future of a country rests on those who will one day lead it, unmitigated pollution can cripple developing economies for decades.
The United States may be far from a developing country, but it is also far from being a leader in green technology. Photovoltaic cells may have been invented here, but China commands the most production in the market, as with electric cars and wind and high speed rail technologies.
“Providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future, because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy,” said president Obama in his State of the Union address.
Although the United States may not be stepping up to save the world, the fight for cleaner skies here, now, is at least alive in demands for tighter legislation. The Environmental Protection Agency, required by the Clean Air Act to set a national standard, is re-evaluating how much ground-level ozone is too much. After three public hearings and considering appeals until March 22, the decision will be announced August 31.
“This is the kind of change that can easily fly under the public radar, but it will have a huge impact on the quality of the air we breathe for the next decade and beyond,” said Janice Nolen, the Lung Association’s Assistant Vice President of National Policy and Advocacy. “We need to seize this opportunity and let the EPA know that lives will be improved and saved if they make the right decision.”
