TJ, it appears China has misplaced priorities. It is not a choice of "first must eat" and then can stop polluting the air. <re <<As a corollary I would suppose that China's ambitions must not (unduly) consider the environmental or the human costs associated with these developments>> ... it is simply not true. though the priorities are stacked as people firstly must eat, then ... etc
folks in the aged economies forget how their own economies got started from utter lack of historic perspective. >
Neither have I forgotten how my ancestral economy got started though you are no doubt right that many people have little to no idea.
There is now a vast range of technological knowledge available, via a simple Google search, which can tell people in China how to do flue gas desulphurisation, particulate removal, stoichiometric combustion and with myriad electronic controls to manage any number of processes. The actual hardware to do it costs very little compared with the value of air improvement. The same applies to any number of matters.
People used to argue that China was 100 years behind. Decades ago, I argued that China was no more than 20 years behind, which is how long it takes a child to go from being born to being an all-singing and dancing fully knowledgeable adult who can bypass 100 years of horribly expensive twisted pair communications, stepping straight into 4G LTE mobile Cyberspace. They do not need to reinvent nuclear reactors, or Formula 1 wheels.
With China's economies of scale, the costs per person are near zero for nearly anything.
It is not a choice between suffocating or eating. Both breathing and eating can be done. Do not spend $billions on things which are not needed while the sun sets behind smog at 30 degrees up from the horizon as I watched happen in Beijing several years ago.
Burning LPG is clean. Burning dirty little black cylinders of muck is not. Swap some of the $billions in US$ debt [which is unlikely to be repaid with something of value] for cylinders of LPG and Coleman cookers, which can be distributed anywhere from hutong alleys to multistorey apartments. China could probably make LPG cookers and no doubt does already.
When Londoners died in smogs in the 19th and 20th century, there was not an option to use LPG, or electricity from nuclear reactors, or insulation, or any number of mod cons now available. They could not cerf mobile Cyberspace to buy things on-line, delivered to their door. People in China can step straight up to the most modern OFDM and other technology that exists.
Mqurice |
