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Fireworks are considered essential to Lunar New Year festivities. Beijing's decision comes after Henan province banned citizens from using fireworks. The Lunar New Year is also known as the Spring Festival, which begins Saturday. The color red is central to the festivities. It symbolizes fire, which can drive away bad luck. Fireworks are used in the hope of scaring away the monster "Nian," a half-dragon, half-lion beast said to come out of hiding and attack people, especially children, during the festival.
A long time ago, Buddha asked all the animals to meet him on the Lunar New Year. According to the legend, he designated a year to each of the 12 that arrived and said that people born on those years would share some of that animal's personalty.
Though an annual tradition, Beijing's government urged the entire capital city to observe a "green and environmentally-protective new year". "Let us enthusiastically take action by not setting off, or setting off fewer, fireworks and firecrackers, and allow Beijing to have a bluer sky, fresher air and a more beautiful and safer environment this Spring Festival," a Beijing government statement said.
The Beijing government approved 511 fireworks stalls this year, compared to 719 last year, and fireworks sales have been poor. "I don't want any myself, but my son insists. He likes the sparklers," a woman told the China Daily. "It's not convenient for us to set off big fireworks as we're not allowed to do so until Lunar New Year's Eve, and there are many restrictions on where you can use them. Also, the smoke they produce pollutes the air." The Chinese New Year will be the year 4714: The Year of the Rooster.
Beijing urges residents to avoid fireworks on Lunar New Year over smog concerns
An estimated 40 percent of the global population use cookstoves that burn solid fuels such as wood. Most studies of cookstoves focus on the health impacts in and around homes where they are used. Those reports show that up to a half-million people are thought to die every year as a result of inhaling fine particulate matter and soot emitted by cookstoves into outdoor air. Now, a new study looks at the air quality and climate impacts of cookstoves on a global scale.
A woman in India is uses a cookstove that produces less smoke for burning wood or any other fuel.
Scientists at the University of Colorado in Boulder and Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, used satellites owned by the U.S. space agency NASA, along with supercomputers that modeled cookstove pollution country by country. Results showed that cookstoves used in Baltic countries like Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Kazakhstan had an enormous impact on climate change, according to Forrest Lacey, co-author of the study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "In general, it's more of the northern latitude countries,” Lacey said. “So that's why we're seeing like the central Asian countries and Ukraine or Romania, because they actually get a lot of transport on the snow of black carbon, which has an amplified warming impact."
Impact on Arctic
Some of these carbon deposits can blow as far north as the Arctic, which is experiencing the greatest climate impact caused by greenhouse gases. The use of cookstoves in populous countries like India and China also has a huge impact on climate change because of the sheer numbers of stoves that are used. But reducing the use of cookstoves in the Baltics, said the authors, would have the greatest benefit in terms of improving climate and air quality.
NGOs hope to distribute millions of clean stoves around the world this year, according to Lacey, making a sizeable dent in the estimated 100 million cookstoves that are used globally. Not only would a large-scale reduction in solid fuel cookstoves improve local air quality, said the authors, it would benefit the global climate, too.
Scientists Investigate Cookstoves as Source of Global Pollution
The authors say high consumption in the United States and Western Europe harms health in manufacturing countries such as China, and the pattern is continuing among developing nations in Asia. “Take an example of a toy,” says Steve Davis, an Earth system scientist with the University of California, Irvine, and one of the report’s authors. He explains that toys sold in America are most often made in China, displacing the emissions that would otherwise be released in the United States. “We’re effectively outsourcing the pollution that comes from the manufacture of that product,” he said.
750,000 premature deaths
Worldwide, the scientists estimate air pollution produced by exported goods and services caused more than 750,000 premature deaths in the baseline year of the study, 2007. The report by Davis and his colleagues at Beijing’s Tsinghua University and other institutions found the cross-border effects of trade-related pollution is greater than the cross-boundary impact of industrial pollution caused by weather patterns. Particulate matter from China was linked to 65,000 premature deaths outside of China, largely in Japan and the Korean peninsula, and including 3,100 deaths in the United States and Western Europe. But U.S. and European consumption of goods produced in China was linked to nearly 110,000 premature deaths in China.
People wearing masks dance at a square in heavy smog during a polluted day in Fuyang, Anhui province, China
The researchers say that as China becomes a consuming society, its manufacturing is shifting, but the pattern is similar, as production and pollution are “outsourced by China into other up-and-coming industrialized countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, India,” said Davis. Those countries are bearing the health costs. The study examined 13 regions of the world and Davis said researchers were surprised levels of harm from emissions that were displaced from one country to another by outsourcing.
Trump order criticized
Davis notes that China’s industrial cities are plagued with pollution, and the country is working to clean up its air. Yet as China expands its use of “scrubbers” that remove fine particulate matter from industrial emissions, environmentalist are accusing President Donald Trump of reversing the U.S. commitment to clean air. On March 28, Trump signed a sweeping executive order to increase America’s energy independence and boost American jobs by reducing the federal government’s role in controlling emissions.
“There’s a concern that in the pursuit of economic gains, we’re maybe willing to now sacrifice our environmental quality,” Davis said, noting the United States has long “pointed a finger at China” for its emissions. The study’s authors say environmental pollution caused by manufacturing, and by worldwide trade, requires a global response that balances the need for clean air and economic growth.
High Consumption, Trade Shift Harmful Effects of Pollution
