As President Trump pulls the US out of the Paris climate accord, China is cutting pollution and dominating clean energy manufacturing. Now it can claim global leadership for those actions.
Matthew E. Kahn, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
China has the world’s second-largest economy, powered by cheap labor and cheap fossil fuel. But now Chinese urbanites want greener, healthier lifestyles. Can the government deliver them?
A summit between officials from the US and China on climate change underscores the crucial role cities need to play in meeting national carbon-emission goals.
Outdoor air pollution causes 3.3 million premature deaths a year, mainly in Asia. And without policies to cut particulate pollution from traffic, industry and home biofuels, the deaths could double by 2050.
Nobel Laureates met recently in Hong Kong to sign a memorandum calling for cities to help guard against climate change. As the most creative places on the planet, big cities are the perfect place to meet this challenge.
Under the Dome, a hugely popular online documentary about China’s smog crisis, could be as influential as 1962’s US pesticide exposé Silent Spring - but only if Chinese officials allow debate to flourish.
Last month was the hottest May in terms of global surface temperature in a historical record that extends back 130 years, according to NASA, and with an El Niño forecast for the end of the year, we could…
Smog has become an unfortunate feature of Chinese city skylines. Air pollution has gotten so bad in recent years that citizens have rallied and the government has declared a war upon it. One weapon in…
Pollution has gotten so bad in China that Prime Minister Li Keqiang opened the annual meeting of parliament on Wednesday declaring a “war against pollution”. This followed the surge in smog over Chinese…
Beijing has once again experienced extremely poor air quality, in what is becoming a regular event for the Chinese capital and other parts of the country. But has anything changed since the last “airpocalypse…
The current “airpocolypse” emergency in Shanghai - which has seen schoolchildren ordered indoors to protect them from the polluted air, flights grounded and companies ordered to cut production - comes…
The cold weather has come, the coal-powered heating has been switched on, and China’s north is once more swathed in thick smog. Air pollution has been a worsening problem in China in recent years, and…
Beijing has been blanketed by another round of heavy smog, this time causing more chaos as businesses reopen and people return after the Lunar New Year Holiday. Over the past eight weeks, the capital has…
Beijing has been smothered by a dense and dangerous smog this month, which has set new air pollution records over several days. The World Health Organization advises that the acceptable level of fine particles…
Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Air Quality & Health Research and Evaluation, Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, University of Sydney; Senior Research Fellow, South West Sydney Clinical School, UNSW Sydney