air pollution

Athletes forgo masks; Beijing skies gray on Olympics eve

Athletes, journalists, and world dignitaries were greeted with a thick white haze yesterday and today as they descended upon Beijing for the start of the Olympic Games. Much to the Ministry of Environmental Protection’s chagrin, the weather has not delivered the "clear and blue" skies as promised when Beijing was awarded the games. However, as […]

IOC and multi-nationals complicit in subjecting world class athletes to world class pollution

You can’t criticize awarding the Olympic Games to China just because their rapacious coal-building policy has now made them the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions. By that standard, America should never have been awarded the games. But awarding the games to a city that is one of the most polluted in the world […]

Beijing skies vary days before Olympics

Monday: Taken from a Beijing apartment on Aug. 4:

Tuesday: Proving that the weather and pollution levels are completely unpredictable, the weather of Aug. 5 was sunny and clear:

A silver lining to all this pollution pandemonium? After the Olympic games China will start to monitor two pollutants not currently figured into the Air Pollution Index: ozone and small particulate matter PM2.5.

And James Fallows of the Atlantic reports that at least one of the new four subway lines in Beijing works smoothly.

Crusher credit: one of many savvy short-term solutions

In case you missed it, noted economist Alan Blinder made the case for a crusher credit in the NYT last week. The idea is to pay fair market value to buy up old, polluting cars. (If you read Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece from a while back, you’ll remember that a fairly small core of […]

Gray skies loom over Beijing as Chinese officials announce emergency air-pollution measures

A haze descended on Beijing for four consecutive days earlier this week and made a fitting backdrop for state environmental regulators to announce emergency measures that they'll put in place if air pollution remains a problem. More power plants and manufacturing facilities could be shut down, and more cars pulled from the roads, according to a news release from the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

This second wave of shut-downs would affect small solvent factories that had previously been overlooked because of their relatively low pollutant emissions as compared to iron factories or coal plants. As The New York Times reports:

Umbra on clean coal

Dear Umbra, I noticed that several of the presidential primary debates were sponsored by clean coal. This was announced during breaks and several commercials aired. I have since seen several more commercials and online advertisements. Is clean coal an oxymoron? Is this a PR stunt or are there any real environmental benefits to clean coal […]

Airborne pollutants all up in Eastern ecosystems, says report

Every ecosystem in the eastern United States is tainted by air pollution, says a new report from The Nature Conservancy and the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. The report looks at the impacts of sulfur, nitrogen, mercury, and ground-level ozone in six different habitats, and concludes that those damn pollutants are pretty much everywhere. Coauthor […]

Study finds that prenatal exposure to coal-plant emissions impedes neurodevelopment

A major new study by the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health finds:

Closing coal-fired power plants can have a direct, positive impact on children's cognitive development and health ...

[P]renatal exposure to coal-burning emissions was associated with significantly lower average developmental scores and reduced motor development at age two. In the second unexposed group, these adverse effects were no longer observed; and the frequency of delayed motor developmental was significantly reduced.

The full study [PDF] in the July 14 Environmental Health Perspectives is available online: "Benefits of Reducing Prenatal Exposure to Coal Burning Pollutants to Children's Neurodevelopment in China." The study provides yet more evidence -- if any were needed -- that we need to ban traditional coal plants: "elimination of prenatal exposure to coal-burning emissions resulted in measurable benefits to children's development." This is a sophisticated study, which used molecular markers to directly track exposure to coal plant emissions:

Clean Air Interstate rule struck down because it devalues sulfur trading permits

The court decision striking down the Clean Air Interstate Rule, a major loss for clean environmentalists, can be traced directly to the sulfur trading program often (mistakenly) considered an example of the success of trading over other forms of regulation. Because the new permitting process would have overwritten existing permits, the electric utility industry was able to successfully argue that these regulations would have resulted in economic damage.

You won't find this in the New York Times article itself but in the mp3 of a background interview in a sidebar of the NYT online story. Although the court was careful not to say so directly, in essence this was a "takings" argument. [Update] (In response to comments, I don't think I successfully make a case that this is a movement towards takings. I'll return to the subject of at a later date. But the main point of this post is that undermining the value of permits is one basis for this ruling - and they do say that right in the ruling (linked in a an early comment.)) The court ruled that that the EPA was not allowed to devalue certain acid rain permits. This is a damn good reason not to turn pollution into property rights (or pseudo property rights in the first place.

And thanks to Brian Tokar for his email -- sent to a list I'm on -- that pointed this out.