Beijing shuts roads, playgrounds amid heavy smog after coal spike

Is this coincidental, I think now. Arrogant CCP saying we can do what we want like a obese child gorging all the cake at a birthday party.

China has lots of well educated scientists and engineers that should be able to come up with better ways to generate power. But fat chance of that happening if those better ways could possibly reduce the wealth of the CCP members profiting most from keeping things as they are.

The CCP have long shown they have little regard for ordinary Chinese citizens.

Chinese is protecting its huge reserves of rare earth metals needed for use in alternative energy equipment, e.g. those metals needed for wind turbines. The CCP must value the control they have while hoarding those metals, more than they value the health of their citizens. And Chinese pollution could drift to Korea and Japan, too, the Chinese may want to control larger areas of Asia, and do not care about other cultures, either.

That is typical of empires, especially totalitarian regimes.

There's a reason he said 'actions speak louder than words'.

At last month's biodiversity conference the world's largest producer of carbon free energy announced that it was building another massive new renewable energy project.

By massive, well, this one project alone is going to produce more clean energy than all of Britain's clean energy projects combined and represents more than a third of America's clean energy production.

Oh, and by building, they meant actually building, because they'd already started construction. And, despite the intense need for more energy production NOW causing them to construct coal fired plants, they're building so many carbon free energy projects that the percentage of fossil fuel produced energy keeps dropping at an impressive rate.

They don't need to blather on about how this time they mean what they say (even as the funds are not going to be in the budget, again) like some self proclaimed leaders, they're actually on a track to meet the targets they announced without doing something they're not already doing, building and building and building and building carbon free energy projects.

Has that charming girl Greta got any thoughts on the pollution in China? Perhaps she'd be able to have a chat with Xi.

The world is pulling together to reduce CO2 and desperately trying to salvage the livability of the earth by 2050.

And then there is China, deliberately doing the complete opposite.

I wonder how much of that pollution the citizens of China are breathing in is courtesy of coal imports from my country, Australia?

China had virtually stopped unloading Australian coal. it was forced to released the already unloaded sitting in bonded warehouses to feed the empty power stations but I would say not a lot of Australian coal is being used or is the cause of the current smog in China.

Glad I don't live in China.

Beijing shuts roads, playgrounds amid heavy smog after coal spike

Massive air pollution in CCP China has been an issue for many years. Pretty safe to say that such living conditions impact peoples health and make a difference if they catch the Corona virus.

Meanwhile, CCP China is constructing 100 more coal power plants --- and this is the country that Western environmentalists want to outsource ever more in order to promote their "green" agenda. Out of sight, out of sight, out of mind...

China must get it together!

Remove counter-revolutionaries.

As a victim of Chinese pollution, I would suggest that we stop buying ‘made in China’

-how else can the filth be lessened?

@PTownsend China's technology advancement does not leapfrog the rest of world, which still largely relies on fossil fuel for energy.

However, what China lacks of are the techniques for the clean burning process, so does India. It's really the world best interests to help these two giant coal users to step up in this regard

So sad, now can China please get with the delivery of my ¥100 dish washing gloves that wear out after a month of use please.

Bigyen

I know! My moms washing gloves lasted months and months, and that was 60 years ago! What changed? Hmmmm

There are more EVs on the road in China than in the rest of the world's countries, combined, but it doesn't help the environment if they are powered with electricity from coal powered plants.

Stop buying Chinese will not prevent the need for power from coal-fired plants.

….

Of course it will.

Less power demand to produce less will mean that less coal has to be burned to produce power-it’s logical isn’t it?

So reducing our consumption of items that wear out after being used one or two is the answer!

…one or two times.

China only thinks about their own existence. They don't care about the world. TOTAL SELFISHNESS!

We should all have been better filtering emissions from fossil fuel for years. Something no government has spent enough money on.

The US (0.7%) lags behind Europe, which lags behind China in % of EVs in use, but the figures across the board are far too low. Norway is probably the best - I saw a figure of 18%. If governments were serious about climate change, they would have spent money on charging infrastructure as fast as they cheerfully burned through it during the pandemic. EV charging capability should be pandemic by now.

I'd be interested to know whether commenters have an EV, an ICE vehicle, or none.

(I do not own a car.)

Good PR stunt waiting-to-happen here:

If some organisation could mock-up loads of images based on the photos in this article, and post them all over the Glasgow COP farce, with the Great Dictator XiJinping's mug-shot emerging through the smog, with the caption:

"Sorry I couldn't be there, thought I'd send you this"

Another great gift from China ......

Don't buy things you do not need.

Coal is a killer! It needs to be phased out as soon as possible! It kills millions of people a year.

We need coal to make the electricity so we can plug in our environmentally friendly Teslas for 8 hours so we might be able to drive 18 miles the next day.

We need coal to make the electricity so we can plug in our environmentally friendly Teslas for 8 hours so we might be able to drive 18 miles the next day.

...and we need oil to lube many of these machines, hoses, tubes etc..as well

Fighto!Nov. 5  04:16 pm JST

The world is pulling together to reduce CO2 and desperately trying to salvage the livability of the earth by 2050.

And then there is China, deliberately doing the complete opposite.

If China wants to be respected and taken seriously as a world power they need to get on the ball with this environmental cause. Their government needs to show the world by example. It's time to put up or shut up.

Cop that COP126!!

Chinese is protecting its huge reserves of rare earth metals needed for use in alternative energy equipment, e.g. those metals needed for wind turbines.

China has closed much of it's rare earth mines over pollution concerns. It imports a great deal of the rare earth metals used to make magnets from northern Myanmar. This is part of the reason the PLA provides havens inside China along with material support for two Burmese rebel groups, to protect their mining interests in the regions they control.

In any event the US and Australia have no shortage of the very same minerals. They really are not rare. China just undercut the price of everyone else, making their mines uncompetitive leading to their closure. Same with the price of magnets manufactured in China. If prices rise many more mines become economical to operate. The deserts of the US have an abundance of these minerals. Same for the price of magnets.

Look at that smog! My wife would tell me about the dirt in the raindrops of Shanghai the air there was so bad.

A few years ago, I sat on a plane for 30 minutes waiting for a break in the smog to take off. I remember opening the curtain of my hotel room that morning to a staggering sight like in the photo. And you can taste the smog through your mask... yes, most people were wearing masks.

The photo makes it look much worse because its taken atop a high rise skyscraper.

China had virtually stopped unloading Australian coal. it was forced to released the already unloaded sitting in bonded warehouses to feed the empty power stations but I would say not a lot of Australian coal is being used or is the cause of the current smog in China.

1) China's energy crisis was the result of the sanctions on Australian coal.

2) The smog in China is not related to coal from Australia.

You like to have it both ways (your post about sanctions on coal from Australia.) The latter is correct but not the former.

1) China's energy crisis was the result of the sanctions on Australian coal.

Not true. China was able to fully replace the Australian coal it refused to buy from South Africa and Brazil, and then some. China typically produces over 90% of its coal domestically. It was production shortfalls from domestic coal mines that created the shortage combined with Baby Ping Ping's own rules restricting use of coal for power production for purportedly environmental reasons.

And you can taste the smog through your mask... yes, most people were wearing masks.

Yep. Mask wearing in Chinese cities was common well before the current pandemic. We have face masks with replaceable filters designed to filter particles the size of diesel exhaust, 2.5 micrometers I think. They are hard to breathe through ! I used to laugh that the trendier types wore black face masks instead of white or the blue surgical masks (which are pretty useless against diesel exhaust).

China was able to fully replace the Australian coal it refused to buy from South Africa and Brazil, and then some

Not true.

"China has increased coal imports from Russia, Mongolia and Indonesia after Beijing stopped allowing any coal cargos from Australia to pass customs clearance in the fourth quarter last year."

"Coal imports totalled 303.99 million tonnes last year, a record high."

https://www.reuters.com/article/china-coal-idUSL3N2L12A9