Has anyone happened to see a movie called "The Lorax"? Well for those of you that haven't the movie is based off the Dr. Seuss book by the same title. In the movie environmental pollution has become so bad that all the trees are dead and people live in a large city where a rich guy found a way to make clean air and is selling it like water. The book (and movie) was meant to send a message telling everyone what the world could end up like if we don't take care of it. When I watched it I thought it was something that wouldn't happen for many, many years but I've now become aware that it may be a not so distant future. Beijing, as in that place in China, apparently has horrible air pollution and smog levels. It's to the point where visibility is often below 100 yards, the government has taken certain cars off the road, factories were shut down, and people are being told to stay inside if at all possible because of the danger to your lungs. EPA officials at the American embassy there say that the Air Quality Index, which measures the amount of fine particles in the air, has been hovering near the top of the chart all month and is extremely hazardous.
To protect themselves from the "dangerous air" many people are taking matters into their own hands and buying masks online. Taobao (a large Internet shopping site in China) sold over 100,000 masks daily in January, and that was just in Beijing. Many citizens aren't buying just normal medical masks either, some are buying full scale gas masks and wearing them throughout the day. Several rich government workers and politicians are being criticized for buying extremely expensive air purifiers for their homes. One wealthy entrepreneur is being praised for his work as he tries to do something about the bad air. Chen Guangbiao is bottling fresh air and selling it. He's literally having air in other places bottled in soft drink cans, having it shipped to Beijing, and selling it for what equals about 80 cents a bottle. Every can has a picture of him on it and says "Chen Guangbiao is a good man".
"If we don't pay attention to environmental protection, in 10 years every one of us will be wearing gas masks and carrying oxygen tanks on the streets," Cheng told ABC News. "By that time, my canned fresh air will be a necessity for household," he predicts. Is this what our world is coming to? We're selling and buying air because ours is actually dangerous to breath? I think it's time for a change on a global scale. We may be one small step away from the world we live in today, and the world we see in this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKVHBguZOBY&sns=em
Original article: http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=18352787&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.smithsonianmag.com%2Fsmartnews%2F2013%2F01%2Fchinas-air-pollution-is-so-bad-that-one-entrepreneur-is-selling-fresh-air-in-cans%2F
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ReplyDeleteI agree with you in the sense that it is very important for us to be environmentally aware and active. However I believe that the claim that this world's air will be unsafe to breathe in 10 years is a little extreme. I personally believe that that claim is just a scare tactic to provoke action. I'm thinking that this claim is a little drastic because you're comparing apples to oranges here. Beijing is far different from The United States. Such factors as our economic systems and governmental systems affect whether or not pollution on that scale is possible. Think about all the awareness in The United States on this subject. I personally believe it will not be a problem for us for a long time because Americans who believe in saving this planet will plant trees and work to save the environment. Scare tactics like this are only there to provide awareness. Pittsburgh is not the whole country.
ReplyDeleteWe, as humans, are capable of such great feats, yet we get stumped at some of the easiest of problems to solve. If we wanted to, we could stop pollution entirely and create a completely "green" planet. If we wanted to, we could discover a way to repair all the past damage that we've done to the environment. If we wanted to. Unfortunately, the world is run by money, and when someone brings awareness to an issue such as this, we can say we care, but at the end of the day, when we're brushing our teeth, the water is still running, and when we leave in the morning, the lights are still on. The technology to create fossil free machines is out there, but it's not convenient for the American infrastructure today, so we forget it. We could bring our most brilliant together to invent a machine great enough to absorb all past pollution and encourage floral and faunal preservation and diversity, but they're all too busy making a name for themselves as the inventor of a new phone or computer, car or tablet. We can, but we won't. I'm just afraid that, by the time we do create such a machine, for we will eventually, it'll be too late, and we'll have done so much damage it might be irreversible, and the thousands upon thousands of years of evolution and growth will be lost forever. We've already won the game of "Survival of the Fittest", the question is, do we want to be all alone on this planet, the only survivor?
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