SEVERAL DAYS AGO the air pollution in Beijiing, which we americans used to call "peking", berfore we corrected ourselves, became so bad that everyone was ordered to stay inside. That's, what, eighteen to twenty million people, inside. That wouldn't work in america; the nation would be torn apart by fights over remote controls.
At some point in the nineteen eighties china took a look at the ongoing economic prosperity of europe, the united states and japan, and decided it wanted in. an agrarian based society would become a modern first world industrial high tech culture.
For many years now they have been building and putting online one new coal burning power plant per week, and its starting to add up. Several years ago when the summer olympics came to town, locals were ordered to stop driving their cars for a few days, in the hope that the world would see a cleaner, more breathable beijiing. It didn't work too well. Many olympic athletes complained about having respiration related performance difficulties.
This brings back not so fond memories for most older americans, memories of lake eeire on fire in nineteen sixty nine, of cities like los angeles with permanent fog. I recall standing on a street corner in downtown L.A. in 1978 at high noon on a bright summer day, wondering where all the "fog" came from.
But now we've cleaned our country up a bit, with more efficient moters and power plants, and the chinese must do the same, or we will all be right back where we started; heavily polluted. Smog knows no borders.
Its now official , twenty twelve was indeed the hottest year on record, by about a one degree margin, which is shocking and frightening. Australia is esperiencing its hottest summer in decades, perhaps ever. What will the summer of oh thirteen be like in middle america? Stay tuned, we won't have long to wait.
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