The newspaper said that, according to search ratings provided for the week by China’s largest online shopping platform Taobao.com, searches for condoms correlated with Chinese cities with heavy smog.
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Those subsidies and other government measures have helped pure-electric auto sales soar nearly fivefold to 113,810 nationally in first 10 months of the year, placing China on course to overtake the United States as the biggest marketplace for electric cars this year.
And after air pollution levels in China’s capital touched “red alert” levels for the first time this week, aspiring new-car owners reportedly flooded local dealerships asking about China’s growing list of modestly priced, domestically made electric vehicles.
To address the issue, 56% of people in China believe rich countries should do more than developing countries because they have produced most of the emissions so far, compared with 33% who say developing countries should do just as much because they will emit the most in the future. “More extensive changes in the regulatory system – some already underway – are needed to fix the problem for good”. “A red alert would have been disruptive; and on the first day of the COP21 climate change talks in Paris it would have been embarrassing”.
Posters on social media for the e6 take a promotion offering pollution masks that are free for anyone seeing one of the auto dealers of Li. PM 2.5 refers to fine, deadly particulate matter that can enter the bloodstream through the lungs.
BYD, the Chinese EV maker backed by Berkshire Hathaway, had an advertising campaign based on a lower level of pollution warnings that it ran when the red alert hit the city.
But this week, for many in the city, vehicle shopping is not on the agenda. But there are no restrictions on electric cars.
Dong Yang, head of China’s automakers association, said on Thursday that sales of electric vehicles can not maintain their current strong growth, and he predicted that pace of growth will slow next year. Electricity generation, though still powered largely by coal in China, does offer a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, as recent studies about EV use in America’s dirtiest grids confirm.
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China’s frequent problems with smog underscore the challenge facing the government as it struggles with the impact of a coal-burning power industry.
