Tackling air pollution in China
A recent study estimates that about 1.6 million people in China die each year — roughly 4,000 a day — from heart, lung, and stroke disorders due to poor air quality. Most of the nation’s lethal air pollution, including headline-grabbing toxins such as fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ground-level ozone (O3), is produced in its coal-dominated energy and industrial sectors. But a substantial and growing contributor to the problem is road transportation; as private vehicle ownership and freight traffic increase, so, too, do ambient concentrations of pollutants from gasoline and diesel fuel exhaust. Concerned about ongoing health risks linked to high concentrations of air pollutants, China has recently taken measures that are expected to improve its air quality. These include an economy-wide climate policy that puts a price on carbon dioxide (CO2) and lowers emissions that degrade air quality, and tailpipe and fuel-economy standards that target vehicle emissions only. What remains...