...This year's tipping-point event for the public debate, dubbed by expats as "airpocolypse," covered 2.7 million square kilometers (over 1 millions square miles) of the country with a pall of smog and impacted more than 600 million people. We pass through Zhengzhou, ranked among the four worst cities in China for air pollution; the city consistently registers levels well over China's official scale for what's called PM2.5 – dangerous tiny particles from coal-burning and industry. In the first half of this year, China's levels of these particles were three-times worse than levels advised by the World Health Organization. It's this kind of air pollution that contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, researchers say. My Beijing friends will call me a wimp, but I've developed a persistent cough these last few days. It's hard to breathe.
"I think the air quality is awful all around the country," a Chinese man surnamed Liang tells me (like the filmmaker, he didn't want to give his full name). "For average citizens, there are not many things we can do about it … We are not yet a democracy. Average people can only try to live their own lives."
According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released Friday, greenhouse gas levels are now higher than at any point in "at least the last 800,000″ years. With a quarter of global carbon dioxide emissions now coming from China, the world's most populous country will have an outsized influence on the future of climate change. That didn't go unnoticed at the IPCC release in Stockholm, Friday. "If China can mind its business well, it will be a great contribution to the world," said report co-chair Dahe Qin, speaking in Chinese in response to a question from a Chinese reporter, according to a translator.
