Shocking Pollution In Beijing Has Led To Half The City’s Cars Being Banned Via A Number Plate Lottery
It’s fairly safe to say that Beijing isn’t the most pleasant place to be right now. Schools have been closed, many factories ordered to either shut down or scale back operations, and half of all the city’s cars have been taken off the road. And it’s all because of excessive smog, which has forced the first ‘red alert’ since the city - the most polluted in the world - adopted a new four-tier system two years ago.
As far as the cars go, one half will be able to drive one day, and the other half the next. As with similar measures brought in for Paris a couple of years ago, which group you’re in depends upon whether your number plate ends on an odd or even number.
So just how bad is it over there? Well, the levels of particulate matter (or PM2.5) in the air measured at 291 micrograms per cubic metre on Tuesday, and the World Health Organisation’s recommendation is just 25. Yikes.
The red alert measures are expected to last until Thursday.
Source: BBC News
Comments
Primary cause later to be found out: Volkswagen diesels.
And I thought Los Angeles was bad
Right?! Can’t even see the stars at night.
Too bad cars doesn’t cause that much polution. The real reason is factories etc. Polution from cars in the world is somewhere around under 1% and this is a fact. Don’t listen to some propaganda by hippies who wants you to cycle to work even tough it’s 50km’s away from your home.
Yeah and I mean cows create more emissions than cars so I guess we should eat more hamburgers?
Very true! I hate it when environmentalists demonize cars and internal combustion engines, they really aren’t the main issue here
Actually, cars in China would cause a LOT of pollution. They are nowhere near as strict as western countries with regards to pollution control.
I agree with you, Chinese government is pushing through what they called Chinese #5 emission standard (Which is basically the same as Europe #5 standard) That means every car which can not meet this standard will experience lots of issue when doing annual examination and will possibly be ban from entering the city area. Also we have less car than Europe people does, so really, car is not the major issue.
What is the major issue is in the province around Beijing, like in Hebei and Shenyang, there are lots of factory creating pollution laying around. Also, to make issue worst, Beijing is like at the bottom of the bowl, there are mountains surrounds city which means the only possible way for smog leave is hoping that there will be wind pushing the smog out. However if you encounter situation that there is no wind for a week, you are Schisse out of luck, literally. It is clear that even if government ban all the cars from the street, the situation will not improve either.
I was actually scrolling through the comment on a Chinese website yesterday, they say it is okay for you to drive your car even it is restricted, because the smog is actually so dense that there is simply no way the traffic camera will capture your license plate.
But it still doesnt mean we shouldnt care.
looks like an elecrtric revelution is needed there
The only place in the world where winning the lottery is a bad thing.
Why can’t they just double the taxes? Government may benefit from higher tax revenues (could be spent on improving public transport to compensate for the fact that less people will be able to afford private cars) and others benefit from less pollution?
What a stupid idea it is to make a “lottery”
Oh please, Chinese tax is already high enough. The same money which can get you a S600 Maybach in US is barely enough for you to get a S400 in China, not to mention S400 is not even available in US
The main issue is people burning coal to keep warm since electric heating isn’t as common in China. Even the dirtiest diesel cannot compare to burning low quality coal.
aside from the black particles that come from a diesel engine, they produce less greenhouse gasses than a petrol engine.
Just sounds like an excuse to have two cars to me… One with an even number plate and one with an odd one.
This thinking, I like it.
I study this kind of stuff in college. The amount of fossil fuel burning is at a staggering rate and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has greatly surpassed previous measured amount of CO2 in the atmosphere millions of years ago due to anthropogenic events. It’s good to see that the world takes measures like this to reduce our carbon footprint, but we’re gonna need more than that to fix things :/
THEY SHOULD REEEEEEEEALYYYY DO THE SAME SHT IN MEXICO CITY!!!! ASAFP!!! But here, they just wait for the birds to drop dead out of the F**ing sky, before moving a finger…
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