when smog forces schools, roads, and airports to
Inside China's Desperate Effort To Control Pollution If James Carville was giving the Chinese government public relations advice, he might say something like, the pollution, stupid. But this wouldn be anything the Chinese government doesn already know. When eight year olds start getting lung cancer that can be attributed to air pollution, you got a problem. When smog forces schools, roads, and airports to shut down because visibility is less than 50 yards, you got a problem. When a study finds that severe pollution is slashing an average of five and a half years from the life expectancy in northern China, you got a problem. Such a visible problem, literally, can lead to myopic responses in a frantic effort to make it appear that the problem is being confronted. For instance, last month the Chinese central government announced it will start publishing a list of its 10 worst and best cities for air pollution each month. But underneath all the haze, the seeds of a real transition ar...