Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
On the city outskirts, we stopped so I could take some pictures of the billboards. There
were advertisements for SUVs and sixteen-wheelers and even coal trucks. What had caught
my eye, though, was a series of municipal ads. One had a picture of the drum tower un-
der a suspiciously blue sky. The adjacent billboard showed an idyllic meadow scene, com-
plete with fluttering doves. In the distance were city buildings; in the foreground, a ladybug
perched on a photoshopped leaf. Above it all lorded a brilliant, shining sun. It's always nice
to find propaganda that has an element of farce.
Overlaid on the picture was a message:
LOVE LINFEN
.
PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT
.
ESTABLISH THE IMAGE.
“Does he work for the environmental protection bureau?” the taxi driver asked.
“No,” said Cecily. I was glad to hear her back away from that one.
The driver was a waggish young man who liked to talk. “I heard that foreign media de-
clared Linfen the most polluted city. That was embarrassing,” he said. “Is that why he's
taking pictures of the ads? During the Olympics they shut down a lot of coal mines and
polluting industries, so it's better now.” They were no longer the number-one polluted city,
he said.
Cecily asked him who had taken the lead spot. “I don't know,” he said. “It doesn't mat-
ter. At least it's not us.”
It was five years earlier that Linfen had first been declared the most polluted city in the
world. The rankings were the work of the Blacksmith Institute, a New York nonprofit ded-
icated to fighting toxic pollution in developing countries. The group's website notes that,
thanks to decades of environmental activism and legislation, “gross pollution” has been
radically reduced as an acute problem in countries like the United States, but that in the
developing world—out of sight and mind to most of us in the West—more than a hundred
million people still face serious health effects from rampant industrial pollution and toxic
waste. Blacksmith's mission is to attack this issue by pinpointing locations where concrete
action could have major benefits for the health of a lot of people. The organization then
provides grants and other support to local partners, who attack specific problems.
Blacksmith released its first public report in 2006, as part of its campaign to bring atten-
tion to such areas. Called
The World's Worst Polluted Places,
the list provided a thought-
ful, data-driven glimpse of places where pollution had severe everyday effects—effects that
could be mitigated, if anyone bothered.
PR-wise, this was a stroke of genius. People love top-ten lists. Top-five lists, top-one-
hundred lists, lists of any length. Anyone who craves hits for a website need only publish
