There is an old joke about air quality in China. An American diplomat is posted to Beijing. He’s into fitness in a big way, jogging three miles every morning. After two years he rotates back to the States and has a mandatory physical. The doctor comes in with his results and tells him, “Well, you’re in pretty good shape, but I really think you should quit smoking.” And the diplomat replies, “But doctor, I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life!”
I heard that joke for the first time in 2002, by then it had already achieved enduring and apocryphal status. For all I know it was originally about some Soviet shithole or some other heavily polluted place unsuitable for delicate Americans, but the point remains. The air quality in China’s large cities is awful. Of late it’s received quite a bit of attention in relation to the upcoming Olympic Games. Athletic competition, after all, requires quite a bit of breathing.
Articles and rumors about how Host City X is way behind or is going to somehow screw up the Olympics are pretty common fare in the run-up to the Games. They are almost always overblown and dumb for the simple reason that any large one-time undertaking like hosting an Olympics is bound to have some part of its preparations encounter problems. The International Olympic Committee has been through it all before and has a pretty good track record of making sure that things go relatively smoothly. Nightmare scenarios about suspending endurance events until the skies clear and the like make for good copy but are unlikely to actually come to pass.
On his blog at The Atlantic Monthy’s website, star correspondent James Fallows has been irregularly chronicling the state of the air in Beijing. Fallows currently resides in the city and has posted a number of pictures from his apartment window showing everything from clear skies to smog infused sandstorms. Back in February Fallows took some comfort from the way the skies cleared and then quickly re-clogged themselves during and after the Chinese New Year holiday shutdown. If shuttering polluting activity for a couple weeks could improve things that dramatically then doing the same prior to the Games, as is planned, stands a good chance of having a similar effect. The real issue here is not whether or not they can clear the skies for a couple of weeks, of course they can; it’s what effects does all that dirty air have on the people who actually live there?
Fallows himself has an article in the most recent Atlantic about just that very thing. It’s worth reading in full, but this statistic leapt off the page:
China’s announced growth rate has been 9 to 10 percent each year over the past two decades; the report said that environmental costs could represent between 2.9 and 5.8 percent, which would reduce China’s miraculous-seeming growth rate to sclerotic European levels.
The numbers come from a World Bank report and they are staggering. Lopping even 2.9% off of annual GDP growth is a significant number with immediate real world costs either in the form of jobs not created and economic activity not happening or in the health and life costs that go with rampant, unchecked pollution. Turning off the cement furnaces and restricting traffic for a few weeks may make the Olympic air passable, but after the closing ceremonies there’s still going to be one and a half billion people breathing toxic air. The Chinese government, to its credit, is aware of the problem and is beginning to address it, but those staggering costs are constantly accruing.
The Olympic air in Beijing is a minor example, but it serves a useful purpose in highlighting just how costly, in terms of real money and real lives, it can be to allow even local environments to go to shit. It costs the Chinese directly and the rest of the world indirectly and it is the furthest thing from free. It’s not much, but it’s something to keep in mind the next time you hear about the negative economic effects of treating any environmental crisis, no matter how big or small.
