Course:ECON371/UBCO2010WT1/GROUP6/Article5
'The Sky Is Not Falling: Pollution In Eastern China Cuts Light, Useful Rainfall'
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Summary
The article under analysis is that of a study done by atmospheric scientist Yun Qian and a team of scientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Over the last few decades, it has been noted that rainfall patterns have changed, and in different directions, within various regions of China. Days of light rainfall have decreased by 23% everywhere. This is serious because it is the light rain that sustains and nourishes agricultural crops, and heavy rain that causes floods. Heavy rain increase was seen in southern China, while northern China saw less heavy rain and more droughts. Over 50 years, data has been collected on pollution levels and rainfall levels. Pollution seemed to correlate with less light rain, and the scientists then began to search for why exactly that is. In depth analysis of the atmosphere helped them explain this trend. Pollution produces particles called areosols, which inhibit the formation of water droplets and therefore clouds that would normally produce light rain. The study emphasizes the need for a reduction in air pollution in China. The scientists explain that if pollution continues to increase, light rain will continue to decrease. As light rain is essential for the production of crops, less of this rain will result in diminished crops and therefore less food. With an ever expanding population, this is obviously problematic.
Analysis
China possesses one of the world largest population other than India. This population has grown rapidly over the past century. A population growth is directly correlated to the demand of the country. In order to reach this demand for sustain a population such as China, many local entrepreneurs have risen to the occasion. To a certain of history, China started to produce products for consumers outside of China. The price of producing such goods in China is much more cost efficient for the non-Chinese suppliers. This trend in China has steadily increase the interest of the outside world in China. The increase of factories that provide these essentials has lead to a major problem that is recently discovered by Yun Qian. Qian is a researcher at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The atmospheric scientist, Qian, claims that the air pollution emitted by these factories that causing direct damage to the environment specifically the air quality. Recently, Qian has discovered that the think clouds of air pollution has a directly effect on the amount of small rain falls. The decline of small rain falls has created an unnatural weather phenomenon. Certain parts of China is facing lower levels of precipitation over the past years. According to the author of the article, the small rain fall helps maintain the crops. Unlike pouring rain, small rain falls will not be likely to flood the crops. The major cause of this phenomenon is aerosols in the sky makes it difficult for water droplet to form which causes to rain. One of the affects of this phenomenon is the imbalance of raindrops over China which can directly affect the agriculture of the other parts of China. According to the article, it seems that most of China is affected by this phenomenon. This will create a shift in the productivity of the agriculture of sustaining the population and its need. One of the solutions of stopping this problem is to reduce the amount of the factories that are heavily polluting the cities and causing environmental damage.
Social Efficiency
Since the amount of light rainfall in China has decreased by 23% over the last 50 decades, this implied that the agricultural sector in Eastern China is being threatened by the high level of air pollutants. This implied that as light rainfall is essential for growing healthy crops, the decrease in amount of light rainfall has prevented Chinese farmer to experience good harvest, and harder to sustain crops, which would affect China’s overall agricultural sector in the long-run. Not only that, the article mentioned that the Northern part of Eastern China has been experiencing more droughts today, which consequently affect water-shortage supply. Frequent disaster such as drought would threatened the Northern Chinese population due to shortage in water supply, and that drought could also result in famine throughout the region.
Additionally, while light rain has continue to diminish, China’s population has been expanding almost 3 times in size in the last decades, as well as the economy. However, this is simultaneously followed by increasing pollution in the atmosphere, which impose great risks to the total Chinese population including health problems. With this, it is imperative for the Chinese government to introduce new policies to reduce the growth of pollution and to reduce marginal damage. The government needs to approach the reduction of pollution from the macro-level, in which the policy should be placed upon market based incentive policies imposing restrictions on the annual emission rate allowed by providing transferable discharge permits (TDP) to Chinese industries and through emission taxes and subsidies which both require regulators to put the program into effects and to monitor outcomes. Other policies to combat externalities from pollution should be targeted at reducing motor vehicles emission rate and promote greener use of energy. The economic incentive approach to the environment policy is known to be efficient.
In the long run, a battle to reduce air pollution will result in higher net social benefits to the society and environment. This include achieving sustainability of crops and surroundings, improving air quality, which would tremendously attribute to improved health and lower the health cost of growing population.
Prof's Comments
An important point to notice in this situation is that this is a formerly unrecognized damage from pollution. Thus, previous beliefs about the location of the marginal damage curve were too low, or previous beliefs about the size of the externality were too low. Thus, the efficient level of emissions is lower than thought.
The next question is how to get there, which you do spend some time discussing.