By now, most of us are keenly aware that emissions resulting from the burning of fossil fuels are causing our planet to heat up, altering our climate and putting the survival of plants, animals and even humans in peril. But what we don't really know is whether it is still possible to stop those emissions and reverse the problem.
Now, it turns out, a great experiment is about to be performed, at enormous financial cost, providing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for science. Several weeks before the 2008 Summer Olympics, in an effort to make Beijing more palatable to foreign visitors, the government of China will begin shutting down industries that emit vast quantities of soot and carbon into the atmosphere surrounding the city.
Though the government has yet to release a list of the industries and factories it will close, various news accounts and official statements indicate that virtually every factory in the greater Beijing area will greatly reduce operations or be completely shuttered for a period of several weeks, and that coal mining operations in nearby Shanxi province may be shut down as well, or at least slowed, before and throughout the Olympics. In addition, auto traffic will be severely curtailed within Beijing, and clouds may be seeded to the north of the city in order to minimize the hideous Mongolian dust storms that commonly plague China's capital.
The effect could be enormous. As much as 25% of the air pollution in Los Angeles comes from China; at certain sites in California, as much as 40% of the air pollution comes from Asia. When the Chinese undertake this enormous, if short-term, change in their emissions, it will send a signal across the ocean to the U.S. that the control of air pollution in one part of the world can in fact affect the atmosphere on the other side of the globe. If we can detect a change in China's emissions as far away as the United States, the great experiment will dramatically illustrate that our choices about emissions can transform the health of the planet.
The last time a highly polluted city offered the world such a dramatic opportunity to witness the daily effect of its industrial and auto emissions was in 1984, on the occasion of the Los Angeles Olympics, during which similarly radical measures were taken to offset Southern California's smog. One of us (Garrett) was a reporter for National Public Radio in those days, covering the Olympics, and well recalls the moment when a clear view of the entire Los Angeles Basin, San Gabriel Mountain range and even hints of the deserts beyond miraculously appeared through a Venice Beach window.
