Smog in 北京 One of my favourite UK newspapers has reported on the smog in Beijing. It's really interesting / terrifying at the same time! http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/16/chinese-struggle-through-airpocalypse-smog (Might be blocked if you want to access it from China) 'The standard international measurement for air quality – the US Air Quality Index, or AQI – rates air quality on a scale of zero to 500. With experience, it becomes possible to guess the AQI in Beijing without looking at official readings. One hundred correlates to a thin grey gauze hovering above the horizon. When the index hits 200, the sky is visible only in a small patch directly overhead. An AQI reading of 300 blots out the sun, smothering the city in drab uniformity. When the AQI reached 755 on 12 January, the worst day on record, the air felt like industrial smoke – chemical-tasting, eye-watering.' 'On particularly smoggy days, the toxic cloud is visible in satellite photos. The worst of the last month's pollution stretched 1,100 miles south, closing highways near the south-western city Guiyang. When the smog clears, it doesn't simply vanish, but instead drifts to surrounding countries. January's smog spurred Japanese authorities to release health warnings to people living in the country's western cities. Traces of China's smog have been detected as far afield as California.' Again this reinforces the fact that at the end of the day, pollution is a global issue and needs to be dealt with collaboratively. I suppose one of the biggest points of contention is that the currently 'developed' nations have been left to their own devices for decades without necessarily paying due respect to the impacts of economical development on the environment (hence the current global warming crisis). Now we know better, but other developing countries *perhaps* (I certainly hope I'm wrong) may feel a certain injustice: that they're now being penalised for pursuing the same intensive growth strategies. Well the evidence is there, and if the people are unhappy, the economy will falter.