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Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

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Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#41

Post by dageshi »

mahranch wrote: post #33
fspeech wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India's pollution is as bad, if not worse: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/02/india-v...

The biggest relevant fact on that page is half hidden. China pumps out 10 gigatonnes of CO2 every year. India? Just 2 gigatonnes tons. In fact, you could combine the U.S, E.U and India's C02 annual output, and it still wouldn't be as much as China. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... Why does that matter? Because India has roughly the same population size as China, but pumps signif…

Doesn't India have a generally warmer climate than China, as in no need to burn fossil fuels to keep warm?

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#42

Post by Retric »

analyst74 wrote: post #37
irishloop wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not really how communism works.

I don't know if this is a joke, but China is more like unregulated capitalism than communism, it's probably more capitalistic than most European countries.

Corruption != capitalism.

With the right connections you can get away with ridiculous crap, but rules as written are not that friendly. Which creates lots of problems for small companies.

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#43

Post by peteretep »

analyst74 wrote: post #37
irishloop wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not really how communism works.

I don't know if this is a joke, but China is more like unregulated capitalism than communism, it's probably more capitalistic than most European countries.

You really really don't know what you're talking about.

The State in China explicitly picks winners and losers from state companies (in particular banks), tightly controls currencies, tries to resist movement of labour, and attempts to hide moral hazard through censorship. All the while guaranteeing full employment.

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#45

Post by refurb »

DanBC wrote: post #12
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autocratic governments aren't exactly known for their forward seeking vision. Problems come up and half assed solutions come down. There's no democratic element to demand a higher level of service, say with how the US had its environment movement which led to many laws protecting the land, air, and water and ultimately culminated into several state agencies, federal guidelines, the EPA, etc. These are large holistic…

Per capita the US is still pretty lousy. http://www.wri.org/blog/2014/11/6-graphs-explain-world%E2%80... The US is still in the top "energy use per capita" countries.

The US is still in the top "energy use per capita" countries.

Of course it is, the US is responsible for a huge percent of the world's output. How could you create things without energy?

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#46

Post by jcyw »

brenschluss wrote: post #40

Say what you will about China and its pollution, it's an interesting attempt at a solution.[1] Could you imagine something like that implemented easily in the US before caught within lawyer-string nets of liability? China has many problems, but many HN readers bashing China have probably never set foot there and are formulating their understanding based off of western media and the socioeconomic + cultural dynamics o…

lol. been to some Chinese village cor a holiday and became a China expert.

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#47

Post by afarrell »

analyst74 wrote: post #36
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the root cause is bad government that can't enforce environmental laws due to corruption...and you are the government who doesn't want to change (say by more accountability via elections and a free press), looking for something that instead treats the symptoms is attractive. Make no mistake, China's pollution problem is very much a political one.

The root cause is focusing on economical development over everything else, including staggering inequality, pollution, and others. The central governments' inability to enforce local municipalities to do whatever they want, is actually result of the shifting political structure from a single autocratic ruler during Mao's era to a more technocratic/autonomous style of ruling. This is a good thing, although it does cre…

Was that policy decision worth it? Well according to http://www.globalissues.org/article/4/poverty-around-the-wor... """ Accounting for the increased population between 1981 and 2005, the poverty rate has, however, fallen by about 25%.

While this at least sounds encouraging, it masks regional variations, and perhaps most glaringly the impact of China:

China’s poverty rate fell from 85% to 15.9%, or by over 600 million people China accounts for nearly all the world’s reduction in poverty Excluding China, poverty fell only by around 10% """

There has indeed been a tradeoff with pollution here which they need to fix. However, I don't see why income inequality is a problem here. If you are starting from massive amounts of extreme poverty, then how would you possibly alleviate that without making some people wealthy?

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#48

Post by jsprogrammer »

JadeNB wrote: post #24
ihsw wrote: post #20

Why do the cities pay for them? Why aren't the coal-burning energy utility companies paying for them, out of pocket?

> Why aren't the coal-burning energy utility companies paying for them, out of pocket? Because no-one has the power to make them, I think. If it's easier (and probably cheaper) to take measures to address the problem yourself than it is to force compliance, then that's the sensible way to go.

Their customers stop sending them money? Would probably shut down most operations pretty quickly.

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#49

Post by DanBC »

refurb wrote: post #45
DanBC wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per capita the US is still pretty lousy. http://www.wri.org/blog/2014/11/6-graphs-explain-world%E2%80... The US is still in the top "energy use per capita" countries.

The US is still in the top "energy use per capita" countries. Of course it is, the US is responsible for a huge percent of the world's output. How could you create things without energy?

But that's not what parent claimed; parent claimed that US democracy mean the US wasn't a passive polluter.

But since you're here: what's the US GDP per capita, compared to other less polluting countries?

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#50

Post by Retric »

analyst74 wrote: post #36
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the root cause is bad government that can't enforce environmental laws due to corruption...and you are the government who doesn't want to change (say by more accountability via elections and a free press), looking for something that instead treats the symptoms is attractive. Make no mistake, China's pollution problem is very much a political one.

The root cause is focusing on economical development over everything else, including staggering inequality, pollution, and others. The central governments' inability to enforce local municipalities to do whatever they want, is actually result of the shifting political structure from a single autocratic ruler during Mao's era to a more technocratic/autonomous style of ruling. This is a good thing, although it does cre…

Much of this pollution has very little economic benefit in the short term and massive downsides in the long term. The real issue is corruption means it's cheaper for polluters ignore the problem than implement even cheap mitigation strategies.
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