Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Although coal remains an attractive economic option in the near term, the environmental
costs of coal and other fossil fuels have become more and more apparent. For the past sev-
eral years, the U.S. embassy has been releasing its own data on Beijing's notoriously bad
airpollution,whichofficialshavecollectedfrommonitoringequipmentwithintheembassy
compound. When I resided in Beijing in 2012, air-quality ratings based on particulate mat-
ter typically hovered in a range between “unhealthy,” “very unhealthy,” and “hazardous.”
For several weeks during the winter of 2013, air-quality ratings exceeded the upper bounds
of the scale by a factor of two. These figures have often been at odds with those released
by China's Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), and the controversy has received
considerable coverage in the press (Moore 2011), prompting a great deal of public discus-
sion about air pollution as well as regular updates on levels of particulate matter in daily
weather reports. Not that most Beijing residents need detailed data to tell them when the
air quality is bad. When buildings just a few hundred meters away are obscured in haze;
when any amount of physical exertion causes wheezing in the lungs; or when what goes
