Artifacts | Coal lumps for Christmas

Vanessa Moore

Now it’s December, the fairy lights are up in Senado Square and you can almost taste Christmas in the air. Well not quite. Macau’s winter breezes generally smell more like the noxious scent of car exhausts rather than the crisp winter fragrance of pine trees or gingerbread. But if you happened to be in Beijing yesterday or anytime last week then you’d probably have tasted something more akin to coal (through the filter of your obligatory air mask, naturally). The Chinese capital has suffered from grim air pollution for many years now, but the timing of this latest ‘airpocalypse’ has been pretty apt. Beijing’s December 1st pollution cloud hit exactly the same day that president Xi Jinping arrived in Paris for the start of the UN climate summit. And even more ironically, this time the heavy haze has affected 500,000 square-kilometres, an area nearly the size of France.
For the first time this year, yesterday Beijing authorities issued a red pollution alert – the most serious warning on a four-tier system. While world leaders and negotiators are now frantically trying to use the last remaining days of the Paris talks to hammer out a deal to help clear the air of pollutants that cause global warming, Beijing is the embarrassing poster child of what not to do. Readings of harmful PM2.5 particles hit 300 micrograms per cubic meter compared with the WHO’s safe level of 25, the Associated Press reported yesterday.  After its 2009 spoiler, China officially has a new status as a major pollution player. Now not only the world’s second largest economy, the People’s Republic (or should that be Pollution Republic?) is also the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
Consequently, this time around, domestic pollution problems have unquestionably contributed to public pressure to take environmental issues seriously. Earlier this year “The Dome”, a film about air pollution by a former Chinese state TV host, garnered more than 100 million views online before it was removed. And now, so bad is Beijing’s haze cloud that last week a performance artist even went so far as to use a vacuum cleaner to suck up the smoggy particles to make a brick of condensed pollution.
But how do we know that Xi et al really care about China’s dirty air problem? This year’s APEC summit in the Chinese capital was somewhat of a turning point. Factories were shut down, cars ordered off the roads and people told not to go to work. The consequent blue skies (dubbed APEC blue) proved to people what Beijing’s sky should really look like while sparing the leadership the international embarrassment of airing its dirty laundry in public. Likewise, yesterday’s red pollution alert may also be a sign local authorities are finally waking up and taking the smog seriously. “The red alert shows the local government has stepped up efforts to protect citizens from pollution,” said Dong Liansai, a climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia, as quoted by Bloomberg yesterday. “It’s probably because of pressure from the central government.”
With the whole world knowing that China’s pollution is as bad as it is, the risk of losing face internationally may be a powerful motivation to spur policy adjustment. Leadership pressure combined with the opportune timing brought about by events in Paris could well herald a change in attitude.
But while many mainlanders hope for cleaner air and better environmental conditions, things will only improve when the government ditches the coal and gets serious about the clean-up. Most of Beijing’s smog comes from coal-fired power plants alongside car exhausts and factories. The Party has already tightened emissions standards by investing in solar, wind and other renewable energy. But this is only a negligible figure and China still depends on coal for more than 60 per cent of its power. According to Greenpeace, local authorities are reported to have approved the construction of more than 150 new coal-fired power stations in the first nine months of this year alone. That doesn’t look conducive to lowering emissions.
Getting back to Christmas, in the yuletide stories of old, Santa Claus would only bring good children presents while the bad kids would get a lump of coal. Until China’s leaders start weaning themselves off the black stuff, Beijingers are undoubtedly set for another soot-covered new year.