“It looks a bit like doomsday” in Beijing at the moment, said Xiang Wei, a 29-year-old securities analyst.
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“Pray for Beijing” had become a meme on China’s mobile messaging platform WeChat.
Power demand soared due to unusually cold weather in November. Visibility in 17 city centers and surrounding regions is reported to be lower than 500 meters, with some reporting no more than 200 meters, according to statements on the Beijing Meteorological Service website. Apparently, the Chinese government is attempting to reduce pollution, but the country’s heavy reliance on coal has resulted in China becoming the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases.
Schools in the Chinese capital Beijing have been ordered to keep children indoors amid extremely high levels of air pollution. The heavy smog erased the capital’s skylines with a monotonous grey & left buildings only a block or two away hardly discernable. “It’s the worst day so far this year”, stated Liu Feifie, a 36-year-old mother & Internet company employee.
As Beijingers wore masks of various kinds while walking the streets and neon signs disappeared into the wall of black smoke, China’s president attended a Paris conference aimed at addressing climate change.
The concentration of PM2.5-particulate matter with diameter of less than 2.5 microns that can penetrate the lungs and harm health reached 945 micrograms per cubic metre in some monitoring stations in southern Beijing. Some suburban neighbourhoods logged levels up in the 900s on Monday. Outside a packed children’s hospital in downtown Beijing, parents and grandparents complained about the smog’s impact on small children.
“The shocking levels of air pollution we have seen in the last few days are a serious danger to the health of hundreds of millions of citizens”, Greenpeace said. “But I think that they’re hoping that this climate agreement will bring them cleaner air and better environmental conditions across China”.
Several hospitals in Beijing contacted by the AP declined to provide figures on patient visits, or their symptoms, during the period of smog.
China’s president Xi Jinping is at the United Nations climate summit in Paris this week promising to help clear the air of the pollutants that help heat up the atmosphere.
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A man wearing a mask makes his way through the financial district in Beijing.
