China: Here Are Some Great Things About Toxic Air

[lafinjack]

China's state-run TV tries to put a positive spin on toxic haze. Nice try, guys, nice try

You can’t make this stuff up. On Sunday, with swaths of eastern China shrouded in a polluted haze, Chinese state media decided to release a list of five “surprising benefits” of smog. Here, courtesy of Wang Lei, an editor for China Central Television’s

Comments

[roadskoller]

It makes them funnier? ooookay

[mimblexwimble]

everything's funnier when you're high on fumes

[romp]

you've been bright-sided!

[mahsox_mahsox]

One of the best things about the Great Smog of London in 1952 was the environmental legislation that came after it.

[nicosian]

Just looking at the recent pictures of Shanghai and Beijing are SUCH a contrast to the startling clarity of air we got when we visited. Even our travel guides were a bit astounded we had blue skies and visibility as far as you could see. It was just a really lucky pocket of very good air quality.

There's some attempts to control smog there, but as it is, people just circumvent the rules and pay the fines. ( licence plate based driving days to keep 1/3 of the cars off the road but with some 5000 new cars a day or something it's a battle our guide told us) and a couple reforestation projects outside Beijng but that's about it.

The citizen's attitudes to things were different than the officials attitudes, we found. Welcome to politics.