Four-tier alerts-blue, yellow, orange and red-will be issued on “heavy pollution” days.
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Limits have been placed on auto use and some factories have been ordered to stop operations.
John Sudworth, BBC News, Beijing: “Why red now?”
Traffic, however, appeared lighter than usual.
The city government of Beijing, China, shut down schools, stopped outdoor construction, and implemented a restrictive auto usage law that mandates drivers with odd-numbered license plates can drive one day; those with even-numbered licenses drive the next.
So why red now?
The red alert has been imposed until Thursday. What would it take, people wondered last week – as their children felt their way to the still open schools through the poisonous gloom – for the government to act? Some believe that Beijing finally was forced to give in to growing public pressure.
The alert will remain in effect until midday on Thursday, when a cold front is expected to help clear the air. Cars with licence plates ending with an odd number will only be allowed on the roads on dates ending with an odd number, and vice versa. Officials say extra subway trains and buses will handle the extra strain on transportation.
On Tuesday morning, pollution in New Delhi was around 420, according to the U.S. Embassy’s air-quality index.
“You have to do whatever you can to protect yourself”, Beijing resident Li Huiwen said while stopping at a market. Firstly, this is not immediate action, given the soaring levels of pollution in the city, literally today.
“For the first time ever, they’ve closed down, all or most all of the schools in the city here…”, said English teacher Jonathan Fredrickson.
The scale of the health impact is vast.
At present, over 30 per cent of the air pollution comes out of automobile emission. The average PM 2.5 concentrations in Delhi from 6 am on Sunday to 6 am on Monday was about 216 micrograms per cubic metres about 3.6 times the Indian safe standard. At Anand Vihar, the Particulate Matter 10 concentration at 8 pm on Monday was 1,903 migrogramme per cubic metre. They needed to travel relatively far, however, because almost all of China’s northeast was affected, and many cities – including nearby Shijiazhuang – were even worse than Beijing.
“If today is a red alert, then what was it I was seeing last week?” asked one Chinese social media user, as reported by the ABC.
“This measure reflects that the government, at least, has the courage to face this problem”, said Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Chinese environmental group, referring to the red alert. According to the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Centre, heavy air pollution will linger until Thursday.
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Still, the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, without a hint of irony, praised China’s contribution to fighting climate change in a commentary on Tuesday, written to coincide with the Paris climate talks. China has been emphasising that it is drastically cutting down usage of coal and promoting a sustainable energy mix of solar, wind and nuclear power and green technology.
