Course:ECON371/UBCO2010WT1/GROUP6/Article3

Chinese Air Pollution Deadliest in World, Report Says

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Summary

In Kevin Holden Platt's article, he discussed about the pollution in China had reached to a dangerous level of pollution that is currently affect the health of many hundredth thousand of people everyday. China is currently one of the fastest and efficient growing cities in the world. The demand for goods has drastically increase the amount of factories in China. This has caused one of the major environmental problem in China, Air Pollution. This situation has gotten the attention of many large environmental groups such as WHO (World Health Organization). The health issue has create many problems from illness, diseases and most importantly immature death. The emission from the factories contains a lot of toxic chemicals that is harmful for human. There are chemicals such as "sulfur dioxide, particulate matter-a mixture of extremely small particles and water droplets-ozone, and nitrogen dioxide." These type of chemicals can cause damage to the lungs and many other part of the human organs. The population of China is one of the world's largest. On one hand, China has problems such as dense population in many larger cities. On the other hand, there are many factories that are close to these dense cities due to efficiency and a large amount of labor force. The factories are one major source of pollution and causes serious health problem to the near-by dense cities. There are two other major pollutants that Platt talked about in his article. It is vehicle emission and burning of coal and charcoal. Due to the size of China, it is a correlation between people and the amount vehicle own per capita. Burning coal and charcoal is another major cause to air pollution in China. Since coal and charcoal are affordable. It will not be surprising that people are introduce to these house warming and energy providing materials, however it is directly damaging the environment around them. There are plans and regulations that China and many environmental organizations such as WHO are working together to tackle this problem. According to Michal Kryzanowski, an air quality adviser at the WHO Regional Office for Europe, this solution to help China's situation will be one of the hardest problem for resolve due to the shear size of China and the booming economy.

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Analysis

China, one of the fastest developing countries in the world, suffers a spike in death toll due to air pollution. With more demands need to be met for more reasonable price, the country is opening more factories that provide recently good quality products. The pollution created by this problem has reached to a critical level. This is affecting the health of many locals. Like one mentioned before, it is due to efficiency and accessible of large amount of labor force that factories are located near large cities. This likely phenomenon or scenario creates a health issue for the near-by dense populated cities. "A World Health Organization (WHO) report estimates that diseases triggered by indoor and outdoor air pollution kill 656,000 Chinese citizens each year, and polluted drinking water kills another 95,600." (Platt, 2007). With that amount of people being affected by the pollution, it is hard not to ignore this human caused disaster. There are two major air pollutants other than factories that Platt talked about in his article. It is vehicle emission and burning of coal and charcoal. With a large population, it can be easily understand the correlation between population and vehicles per capita. The amount of vehicle on the street of China is polluting the air over the past years. It has been a concern over the past years. One of the most worrying pollution that affects the air in China is coal and charcoal. These materials are often use to generate energy to power up factories, transportation and heat in houses. These materials are easily accessed and affordable for large corporation or regular citizens. However, the consequence to this mega development is causing direct pollution to the environment of China. Most importantly, this is affecting the health of many in China. Unlike Canada, China does not offer a great health service or care for the locals. It is much more expensive to be treated for illness while people are struggling to survive on less than minimum wage life style and minimum job opportunities. In order to protect the environment and the Chinese citizens, the government must take actions before this ball of snow becomes too big to stop and causes further problem to future generations. Fortunately, there are organization such as WHO that offers great amount of help to reduce emission in China.

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Social Efficiency

The deadly levels of pollution entail significant social costs. Firstly, it is reasonable to assume that less people may be inclined to travel to China. The world today is already too full of cancer and disease. When people hear that air pollution can contribute to such illnesses, and that China has the worst air pollution of anyone in the entire world, the logical result is to not put one’s self in such a dangerous environment unless it is absolutely necessary. People who wanted to see The Great Wall of China might be more inclined to settle for the Eiffel Tower, etc.

The article discusses the pollution standards the World Health Organization wants China to get to in order to dramatically decrease the number of deaths caused by the pollution. This is much easier said than done. As discussed in previous article analyses, there isn’t all that much in China to give up or stop, without negatively impacting a large group of people. The population of China is so enormous that cost effective solutions are hard to come by, and anything that would decrease well being and elevate poverty rates is a bad idea. China pollutes so much due to it’s large population and it’s world wide exporting industry. Closing down factories would put thousands out of work. Forcing firms to invest in better technology would cause workers to be laid off, and again out of work. Also, with such a substantial population, enforcing any such policy would be nearly impossible. And moral obligations to improve the environment are not dependable due to the almost necessity to pollute to get by and survive in many regions of China. It would be reasonable to explain the pollution problem in China as a vicious circle, and one we have not been able to find our way out of yet.

Prof's Comments

You need to get the definition of efficiency right. Efficiency occurs when the net economic surplus is maximized, which in our analysis occurs where marginal benefit equals marginal cost, or in the case of pollution abatement, marginal abatement cost equals marginal damage. Locating factories near large cities relates to efficiency, in that there is a resource, labour, that can be used. However, the existence of a large labour pool in itself does not say anything about efficiency. Further, the externality, the pollution, creates an inefficiency. The factories themselves do not take account of the fact that they are making people sick and killing some of them. Having this externality means that things are probably not efficient.

You identify some of the challenges to changing things. However, these challenges are more on the political side than the efficiency side. The loss of jobs is a political issue, as people don't want to loose jobs. It is not an efficiency issue, as most people will find work somewhere else.