Yes, someone made the calculation: 4,000 tons, according to a recent article
in China Daily.
A total of 4,000 tons of pollutants are estimated to be in the air in urban areas of Beijing on serious pollution days,
according to a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The calculation was based on the size of Beijing’s urban area and
concentration of pollutants, including PM2.5, or particulate matters less than 2.5 microns in diameter.
Many parts of central and eastern
China witnessed more than 20 days’ of hazy weather in January, according to National Meteorological Center, the worst since 1961.
Beijing
and its neighboring areas were the hardest hit, with only five days free of smog weather in Beijing in January, according to the Beijing
Meteorological Bureau. Concentration of PM 2.5 was as high as 1,000 micrograms in parts of Beijing on serious pollution days in January.
The
World Health Organization recommends average 24-hour exposures of less than 25 micrograms per cubic meter. So, 25 versus 1000…
Welcome to
Beijing!

A recent survey in France among the 18 to 29 years old shows one in four
wants to leave the country to start their business. Estimates say that in 2012 a record 5,000 entrepreneurs left. Not to be surprised when we
see the sclerotic labor and tax laws, the inefficiency of governments, the corruption, the vested interests, the monopolies with their strong
lobbies in countries such as France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Greece, … Then people wonder why the high unemployment, why the Chinese want to
come over and buy companies. As explained in Toxic Capitalism, we cannot improve the environment and society if those countries do not
completely overhaul their system. It does not look promising at all as the old guard refuses to abandon their privileges (among them, the
labor unions, the farmers, …). You must be ”weird” to start in business in those countries, or completely crooked. A good friend in Belgium is
trying to expand his factory over there but bumps into the most cumbersome and irrational obstacles. And oh yes, the guy in the administration
who needs to give him an approval is away on a ski vacation.
Sometimes I wish the Chinese would take over those countries, and get things
going. Chinese being oh so socialist the first thing they’d do would be to shut up the labor unions and make people work. As they did in a
port in Greece – that part of the port is now doing very well, thank you.

Fuel quality is a much overlooked issue. Beijing tries to enforce higher fuel
standards but gasoline and diesel fuel sold in other locations is often of a very poor quality, not only affecting pollution but also messing
up the engines and exhaust systems of the newer cars. Some famous brand cars can simply break down because of the bad fuel and then the brands
are attacked for being “of poor quality”. Things that need to be done: reduce the power of the big oil companies, enforce quality and adjust
fuel prices.
Beijing has been having some really bad, bad days with its air pollution. Today we were again at AQI levels of over 400 for some
time. It does not help we have now in the city 5.2 million vehicles, increasing at 200,000 per year. In 2008 we had 3.13 million.
As far as I
understand, transport in the city is responsible for about half of the pollution (car exhaust, dust, etc.). According to estimates, 20% of the
pollution comes from coal burning, 20% comes neighboring provinces and 25% from vehicle emissions.
The big oil companies are dragging their
feet as it requires big investments. In Beijing sulphur content is supposed to be under 50 ppm; neigboring provinces are at 150 pp. Then we
have diesel with 2,000 ppm. So, the bad air comes to Beijing and cars outside of the city face breakdowns.
See more about it:
“State-owned
oil companies in firing line over Beijing’s pollution”
Ministries are almost powerless to enforce air quality standards amid state-owned
entities’ influence and their quest to keep costs down
4 February, 2013 – Reuters in Beijing – SCMP
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1142784/state-owned-oil-companies-firing-line-over-beijings-pollution
“The
search for culprits behind the rancid haze enveloping Beijing has turned the spotlight on the mainland’s two largest oil companies and their
resistance to tougher fuel standards.
Bureaucratic fighting between the environment ministry on the one hand and China National Petroleum
Corp (CNPC) and Sinopec Group on the other has thwarted stricter emission standards for diesel trucks and buses – a main cause of air
pollution blanketing dozens of cities.
…
Delays in implementing stricter emission standards are rooted in money – chiefly, who should pay
for refining cleaner fuels. By some estimates, vehicle emissions contribute as much as a quarter of the most dangerous particles in Beijing’s
air.”

See the article of John Kennedy in SCMP
http://www.scmp.com/comment/blogs/article/1139077/china-now-matches-rest-world-combined-annual-coal-consumption
and
also:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/29/china-is-burning-nearly-as-much-coal-as-the-rest-of-the-world-combined/
China
burned through 325 million more tons of coal in 2011 than in 2010, according to the US Energy Information Administration, and consumption of
the fossil fuel has grown an average of 9% since 2000. China’s coal use grew 9% in 2011, rising to 3.8 billion tons. At this point, the
country is burning nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined (4.3 billion tons).
China, but also the world, is paying the price
for using China as “factory of the world”. Everybody complains about China burning so much coal, but what do you expect from a continent
with 1.3 billion people mass-producing all the gadgets and other consumer items the West loves to buy at a cheaper than cheaper price,
generating so much waste? It is the orgy of overconsumption. To manufacture, we need energy. To make improve the life of the Chinese people,
we need more energy.
We should consume less but go for better quality and durability, and impose environmental and labor laws on the supply
chain – while paying a fair price. We have to stop the vicious cycle of overconsumption. Otherwise, the West should shut up and be less
hypocritical. Read “Toxic capitalism”!

Interesting article in China Daily – as I mention in my book, do we really
need so many clothes? So many pairs of jeans, shoes, suits, dresses? Look into your wardrobe and ask yourself how much of all those clothes
you actually use, and how often. I always tell family and friends, please don’t buy me more stuff (even if “it was on sales and so cheap”). I
think I have enough for a couple of years. Knowing what it takes to get a jeans or even a T-shirt, the need for cotton, other fibers, the
water and energy to produce it all. Not even to talk about the factories where workers slave to make it. And are fortunate not to get
work-related diseases or die in a factory fire. The point here is not to make them lose their jobs but at least to pay them a reasonable
salary and give them humane working conditions. We buy less but pay more.
When less is more: Tiffany Tan explores the “capsule wardrobe”;
“With consumerism and fast fashion booming in China, Tiffany Tan susses out if the Chinese are ready for capsule wardrobes – a collection of
only a few essential pieces that can be mixed and matched.”
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/beijing/2013-01/22/content_16152664.htm

In “Toxic Capitalism” I detailed China’s plans to improve
its energy consumption and energy mix.
Here some recent updates, source: China Daily.
Situation 2012
– Total energy
consumption reached 3.62 billion tons of standard coal, up 4% year-on-year
– China will reduce coal consumption’s share of the total energy
mix to 65% from 66.4% in 2012.
– Non-fossil fuel consumption took up about 9.1% of the energy mix, up 1.1% year-on-year.
– Natural gas
consumption accounted for 5.5% of the total mix
Goals 2015
– Energy consumption will be capped at 4 billion tons of
standard coal, and power use will be 6.15 trillion kWh
– Keep oil imports within 61% of total demand
– Energy consumption per unit of GDP
will be cut by 16% compared with 2010 levels while energy efficiency will be raised by 38%
– Coal production capacity will reach 4.1 billion
tons, but the output will be limited within 3.9 billion tons
– China will raise its non-fossil fuel consumption to 11.4% of primary energy
use, with natural gas accounting for 7.5%
– Newly added proven reserves of coal-bed gas will be 1 trillion cubic meters, and shale gas will
reach 600 billion cu m.
– Sinopec will own up to 1 billion cubic meters of shale gas production capacity
– Installed generating capacity of
nuclear power plants will reach 40 GW

On 24 January 2013, China Daily published an article “US faces the gun and
tax cliffs” by Stephan Richter (publisher of The Globalist and president of The Globalist Research Center). The fact they publish it shows
they basically agree with that view. Now, some strong words here about the gun mania in the USA:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2013-01/24/content_16167781.htm
“Somehow, the US seems stuck in the concepts of the
Old Testament. The perverse self-justification of all those gun buyers who now sheepishly argue “why should my freedom be restricted just
because some kids got shot?” attests not just to a level of naiveté, but inhumanness that begs disbelief.
…
The crux of the issue is that
Americans must abandon their childish ideas of how a society works. No person is an island unto himself or herself. We all live as part of a
much, much larger group. The people must understand that using assault weapons for hunting or shooting is not an expression of freedom, but an
expression of human sickness or perversion.
…
What the NRA is peddling is an incredible hoax. Americans can no longer go on accumulating
limitless debt but they can still buy weapons at every Walmart and plenty of other stores. The offer on hand to deal with one’s frustrations
is not to consume, but to shoot.
The blindness of American society, which is generally a very fearful one, is staggering. Putting that many
weapons out there – almost 1 for every American man, woman and child – is not just bewildering. It is plain dumb.
…
The only grammatically
correct way to read the Second Amendment (“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people
to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”) is not to see it as two independent clauses. Rather, the first half clearly qualifies (in
fact, conditions) the second.
…
As a matter of fact, after the Newtown school massacre, there cannot be any doubt that a revised Second
Amendment to the US constitution is urgently required. And it should read: “A well regulated society, being necessary to the security of a
free people, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall be abridged.” The very notion of civilization demands no less.”
Not that I
disagree!

Fine people who waste food, says pioneering rice scientist. Father of hybrid
rice’ slams the excess of sumptuous official banquets, see SCMP article
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1135460/fine-people-who-waste-food-says-pioneering-rice-scientist
In my book
Toxic Capitalism I detail some of the waste in food, not only in developing countries such as the USA, but unfortunately also in China and in
Hong Kong. Yuan Longping is right to raise the alarm as the waste of food is sometimes shocking, like in the banquets and even in
universities. Fines are not enough, education is even more urgent. Since several years China is now obliged to import massive amounts of food
(corn, soya, milk, meat, …).
As says the article: “China News Service has reported that the country’s leftover food could feed more than
200 million people a year. The State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development said about 128 million people were
living below the official poverty line in 2011.”
Blame the government officials, the new rich and all others who forgot the value of
food.
Update:
China Daily published the original interview on 25 January:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2013-01/25/content_16172766.htm
According to the article China wastes every year 200
billion yuan (US$32 billion) of food.

Suddenly everybody notices the bad air in Beijing. Finally I am not the only
one.
I have been probably one of the first to publicly point out the bad situation. Just check this blog for earlier posts.
See as an
example: http://blog.strategy4china.com/?p=3737
But here you can also find historical data about the distorted figures from the
Beijing administration, as well as a guide to what we are talking about. All done years ago and still valid:
About the Beijing API charts: http://blog.strategy4china.com/?page_id=2463
About API and AQI and the impact on health by air pollution: http://blog.strategy4china.com/?page_id=2343.
And all the other entries on air pollution.

As I mention in my book “Toxic Capitalism” the city is certainly not an
example to follow in terms of municipal waste per capita, recycling (e.g. glass), food waste and waste disposal. Hong Kong has a typical
“throw-away mentality”. But as the landfills are running out of space (they will be full by 2019), proposals to build an incinerator (cost:
HK$14.9 billion) and other initiatives face public opposition and scrutiny. As in other cities, the core problem remains the same: people
simply waste too much and don’t care. They push the problem into the future. Let the next generation clean it up. Toxic Capitalism at its
best. Hong Kong will spend at least HK$31 billion on waste-handling infrastructure in the next seven years, read more in the SCMP:
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1133346/hk31b-bid-solve-hong-kong-waste-crisis