China Daily: “Capital to expand public transportation”, article 21 February.
I applaud all the efforts being made to expand the subway and bus networks. The length of subway lines is now 442 Km and at the end of this year will reach 465 Km. It is an important contribution to improve Beijing’s air. However too little attention is paid to bikers (like myself). The city is putting a total of 50,000 rental bikes on the streets but we bikers are considered second class citizens. Cars obstruct bike lanes, pedestrians love to walk in the lanes while they have all the space on the side walks (often they are smoking and talking on their mobiles, paying no attention to our warning). People have a total disregard for others, especially bikers; if we complain we get very angry remarks from car drivers and pedestrians. We can call them “the ugly Chinese” and there are lots of them.
When will police and the authorities act? Unlikely as police is nowhere to be seen and does never help us.
Air pollution dangers in Beijing and Hong Kong: details
The latest research from the Chinese Academy of Sciences found a large amount of nitrogen-containing organic compounds in the recent smog that shrouded Beijing and neighboring cities. The compounds are key components of the photochemical smog that shrouded Los Angeles during the 1940s and 1950s, causing hundreds of premature deaths and around 2,000 traffic accidents in a single day in 1954.
Exposure to nitrogen dioxide might damage the lungs and increase respiratory infections, especially in children and the elderly.
The nitrogen-containing organic compounds are mainly from exhausts and account for a large amount of the city’s PM2.5, it is said.
Pollutants in the Pearl River Delta are more dangerous than those choking the capital because they contain higher levels of hazardous nitrogenous organic compounds, according to an expert at the China Academy of Meteorological Sciences.
The volatile organic compounds were mainly emitted during the manufacture of shoes and cosmetics and were the main components of photochemical smog.
Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine established a clear link between exposure to PM2.5 pollutants and early death after following 154,000 patients in England and Wales who had been taken to hospital with heart attacks between 2004 and 2007. They followed the patients for more than three years after their release from hospital. Nearly 40,000 died in that period. If PM2.5 levels had been reduced to their natural background rate, they calculated the number of deaths would have fallen by 4,873, or 12%.
“We found that for every 10 microgrammes/m3 in PM2.5, there was a 20% increase in the death rate,” said the research.
About 30 times thinner than a human hair, PM2.5 particles have long been identified as a respiratory problem, as their size enables them to lodge deep in the lungs. The average PM2.5 level in Hong Kong is around 30 to 35 microgrammes/m3. The World Health Organization has set guidelines of a maximum of 10 microgram of PM2.5/m3 as an annual average exposure.
In Beijing last month, PM2.5 levels reached 993 microgrammes/m3, almost 40 times the WHO’s recommended safe limit of 25 microgram over a 24-hour period, triggering a public outcry.
If some people still underestimate the dangers of air pollution, they are really naïve.
Read more:
21 February 2013 – Smog in Pearl River Delta ‘worse than in Beijing’
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1154950/smog-pearl-river-delta-worse-beijing
and this one, with a questionable title:
19 February 2013 – ‘Smog readings in Beijing nothing to be concerned about’
By Zheng Xin (China Daily)
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2013-02/19/content_16236264.htm
Fracking in China
In my book I show China’s imports, overseas deals and its goals to tap into its huge shale gas reserves and the way it is trying to implement the process – facing much more difficult geological conditions than in the USA. But also barring access to foreign companies.
Some experts have doubts China can achieve the targets set, being 80 billion m3 (bcm) by 2020, or 23% of total expected demand. Until now, it has not yet started commercial production.
Experts contacted by Bloomberg have now reduced their estimate for 2020 to rather 18 bcm.
According to U.S. specialists (and they are the only ones who have the technology and expertise), China needs to invest more in exploration and development of the projects, and should relax fuel price controls.
Under the present conditions, foreign entities have very limited access to the projects, not allowed to bid directly for the blocks and playing subcontractor while Chinese companies involved in winning bids seem to have little or no expertise: there is limited enthusiasm to invest with the current low price ceilings.
That could well mean that China will continue to massively import natural gas; it is spending US$17 billion a year on imports of natural gas, mostly in the form of LNG (US$8.3 billion in 2012), mainly from Australia and other countries. It also has thousands of kilometers of natural gas pipelines coming from other countries, through western or northern provinces.
As said, with the low quality of the winning bids the companies involved are raising the question in how far they will do it right and not cutting corners.
The U.S. energy revolution: fracking
In the article of IHT/NYT, “Spreading an Energy Revolution”. by CHRISTOF RÜHL, published: February 5, 2013, the group chief economist of BP preaches all the wonderful results of fracking. I agree that fracking has its advantages and marks progress. But as I explain in detail in Toxic Capitalism, the technology is also very dangerous if not planned and executed with utmost care. Rühl obviously glances over all those problems. The prospect of North American energy self-sufficiency is real but comes often at a cost that is shifted to future generations to deal with. Especially if some companies, like BP, are known to cut corners with terrible consequences.
See the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/opinion/global/spreading-an-energy-revolution.html
SCMP reported that worldwide shale oil production could add US$2.7 trillion to the global economy annually by 2035 by slashing the price of crude by as much as US$50 a barrel, according to a recent PWC report. Shale oil production could surge to 14 million barrels per day, or as much as 12% of total oil output from around 1% now, as it expands from its US base over the next two decades, PWC reported.
But not everybody is buying it.
In another IHT/NYT article, “Vast Oil Reserve May Now Be Within Reach, and Battle Heats Up”, by NORIMITSU ONISHI, published February 3, 2013 the author digs into some of the controversies regarding the Monterey Shale in California.
The oil companies’ plans for the Monterey Shale are drawing increasing scrutiny from environmental groups. Though oil companies have engaged in fracking in California for decades, the process was only loosely monitored by state regulators.
The Monterey Shale’s geological formation will require companies to engage in more intensive fracking and deeper, horizontal drilling, a dangerous prospect in a seismically active region like California, environmental groups say.
Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity, are suing the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Conservation to prevent the opening up of further land to oil exploration and to enforce stricter environmental practices.
Said Kassie Siegel, a lawyer at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Fracking poisons the air we breathe and the water we drink. It is one of the most, if not the most, important environmental issue in California.”
As a result, there is now more attention paid to regulate the whole process and make sure it goes as the oil companies pretend: “there are no problems, no incidents”.
Read the whole story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/us/vast-oil-reserve-may-now-be-within-reach-and-battle-heats-up.html
More worrying is that China is looking at fracking for its own energy revolution – but conditions are much tougher than in the U.S. And Chinese excel in cutting corners. More about fracking in China in a next post.
Thrift versus waste, talking about food
On Saturday evening I went with the family and several Chinese friends to one of those huge Spa places, close to Sihui Metro Station, one famous for its buffet food. The restaurant was fully packed and Chinese were consuming enormous amounts of food in a near frenzy. I saw a lot of food going to waste, as people fill up enormous plates and often fail to finish. It is one of the examples of food being wasted, not just in the official or wedding banquets, where doggy bags are seldom used for obvious reasons.
Not only China Daily but also incoming president Xi Jinping has pleaded for wasting less.
Chinese New Year is one of those occasions were waste of food, useless presents and extravagant packaging are still the norm.
China Daily has published several calls for thrift, such as:
“Thrift is better than an annuity”, by Op Rana. (8 February 2013)
http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2013-02/08/content_16214356.htm
The article mentions some disturbing figures:
– According to one estimate, more than 200 billion yuan ($32.16 billion) worth of food is wasted as leftovers in China every year. Others say the amount of food wasted in the country every year is enough to feed 200 million people.
– The Institution of Mechanical Engineers says in its recent report that up to half of the food produced in the world ends up as waste every year. This, according to the UK-based independent group’s report, means that as much as 2 billion tons of food never makes it on to a plate.
– A 2011 study by the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology – sponsored by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization – which said that about one-third of all food produced (1.3 billion tons) ended up as waste annually, in equal measure in developed and developing nations.
– Up to 30% of the British vegetable crop is not harvested because it fails to meet marketing standards for size and looks.
As I mention in Toxic Capitalism, problems in transportation & storage, unnecessarily strict sell-by dates and buy-one-get-one free offers are to blame. But also consumers’ demand for cosmetically perfect food, along with “poor engineering and agricultural practices” are to blame.
Says Op Rana: “Those indulging in extravagance and exhibitionism should remember another Chinese proverb: A thriftless woman burns the entire candle looking for a match.”