The Gobi desert is ruining my health...

[Ian]

That and the cars and coal.

I can't go on my daily runs anymore, and I've got a smoker's cough and tight chest.

Only solution - more training

More shuaijiao jibengong.

:L

[Dabbler]

Only mad dogs and english men go out in the mid day sun

[bailewen]

It's not just the Gobi dessert, it's also the fact that China's energy is mostly coal based.

[Ian]

It's not just the Gobi dessert, it's also the fact that China's energy is mostly coal based.

"That and the cars and the coal."

[bailewen]

Oh yeah...did I mention the burning trash piles scattered here and there?

Fuck man. I sometimes think I am going to seriously smack around the next Chinese who gives me some line of TCM craptastic bullshit about "seasonal change" or "liver deficiency" to explain my constant runny nose and low level cough.

The people who grew up here are just like smokers. Their lungs have already given up on pushing the toxins out.

[Ian]

"It's an inevitable part of economic growth."

[bailewen]

More like an inevitable part of population growth. (cue the RSF eugenics conspiracy theorists)

It's a statistical fact though that per capita, the Chinese are vastly cleaner than Americans.

[yusuf]

More like an inevitable part of population growth. (cue the RSF eugenics conspiracy theorists)

It's a statistical fact though that per capita, the Chinese are vastly cleaner than Americans.

based on an average of the number of showers per person per year...

[bailewen]

rofl...

It's funny...."because it's true...."

I've been thinking about it a lot lately, not the shower thing which, ironically, is also true, but more on a lifestyle habits thing.

In the US, they tell us we should turn down the temperature on our water heater.
In China, they mostly take cold showers. Those with hot water heaters, just heat it up for 20 minutes before the shower and then turn off the heater. Kitchen sinks and washbasins are cold water only.

In the US they tell us to keep the thermostat turned down a bit and put on a sweater.
In China, those with heated apartments (radiators) only get heat about 4 or 5 hours/day. It comes on in the morning for a couple hours and again at night for a couple hours. The rest of the time it's just cold. Those who install heat...or air conditioning for that matter, would never imagine heating or cooling the whole house. They just heat/cool the single room that they are in at the time.

Laundry day? No electric dryers in China.

GM sold more cars in China than America last year but as a percentage of population, Chinese people still mainly walk, bike, take public transport of ride electric mopeds or scooters.

The list goes on and on but the general point is that even though China, as a nation, produces more pollution than anybody else in the world, each individual Chinese person produces a small fraction of the pollution produced by each individual American.

[meeks]

well, in defense of the USA, the vast majority of Chinese cannot afford more than a bicycle to ride. It's not about them 'choosing' to be green. They truly don't give a f*** about the environment because there is no education/propoganda to tell them to be 'green'. When you say "look at the pollution here - you can't see more than 4 blocks down the street" you get 'mei ban fa - ren duo' (nothing we can do about it...there's lots of people) rather than "yea you're right. because there's so many people we should try to minimize our pollution". one thing I found is that if it's free they'll take total advantage of it. anytime my friends in china had 'free ac' they'd run it with the windows open, even when they weren't home. 1.5 hour long showers if the hot water was free...

I think it's because most of them have nothing that on average it works out that they appear to pollute less.

[bailewen]

Yes and no.

Some...many really...just don't have anything and are ridiculously environmentally UNaware. But on the other hand, most of the city Chinese people I know are just plain ridiculous cheapskates.

I was listening to a podcast a while back, I forget which one, and the story was ...maybe it was a Slate article or something...anyways, it was comparing saving electricity with dieting. Most of us know which foods are fatter and which are leaner but have very little handle on to what degree and even if we know, generally can't change much. All the science on the subject says that "diets" have virtually zero effect. You diet has a big effect but going on "a diet" does not. Just about the only item with any major scientific backing showing it to be effective is keeping a food diary. Just recording everything and seeing in black and white what you actually eat tends to produce change.

So what does this have to do with environmentalism? We have no idea what we spend on electricity for all of the various items in our home. There's a huge disconnect. We know that a dishwashing machine uses "a lot more" electricity than a light bulb but studies show that we generally haven't a clue to what degree. Most people don't realize that changing the light bulbs to those spirally fluorescent things saves vastly more than turning off the lights in rooms you are not in. We tend to underestimate the cost of various appliances by orders of magnitude. So what's the solution?

Put clear electric meters in our homes. That's what the article suggests. Instead of just getting a monthly bill having a meter that we don't see and don't understand, we should have a nice easy to read meter right by the door. . .( like they do in China) My wife checks that thing all the time. Sometimes she turns off everything in the house but just a single appliance just to see what it costs to use for an hour. All our household appliances can be measured not just in kilowatts but also in actually money. Turning on the shower heater for half an hour costs about 0.1 yuan. We used to spend about 1.5 yuan/hour on air conditioning by turning it on to cool the bedroom and then shutting it off when we were comfy only to turn it on again a bit later. Then we used the meter by the door (nice clear LCD display of how much money is left on the meter) and discovered it cost only half as much if we just turned the AC on to a much lower setting (meaning higher temp) and left it on.

I think about how I have never been in an American home that only cooled one room with the AC. It's always about a thermostat for the house or at least one floor or for the apartment. And sure, there's poverty creating a natural recycling business: no pickup required. just place your recycleables next to the trash can, not in it. That way they old lady who goes trash picking for a living will save time. But even the people I know with money barely ever turn on the AC and in winter their houses are around 15 or 16 C which is way colder than any American would tolerate. At the school where I work the classrooms all have AC units but they don't get turned on except for the last couple weeks of school in late May. I sweat through 30-35 C. classrooms for a solid month, sometimes 2 before I get any relief.

I suppose it partly that even those with money are only recently that way. They still think like poor people. My Grandma was like that. She lived through The Great Depression. In my lifetime she always had money but she was the stingiest person I ever met. We'd always have to send someone sneaking back into any restaurant we ate at to get some more money to the waiter because she'd never tip more than 5% or so.