U.S. doesn’t need to emulate Beijing

There are a lot of things to like about Canada, whether it’s the charm and civility of its denizens or the fact it’s spawned great musicians like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell.
But there’s something else about Canada the Chinese have become particularly fond of – its air.
As Chinese cities in general and Beijing specifically are smothered day after day in deadly blankets of smog caused by thousands of cars, scores of coal-burning power plants and environmental regulations that could best be described as lenient, some of the Chinese people have taken to purchasing bottles of Canadian air for about $23 apiece. For their $23, they are promised a refreshing jolt of crisp, clean O2 straight from the Canadian Rockies.
When you stop to consider there was once a brief craze for pet rocks in this country and Americans buy water by the bottle when they can easily get it from the tap, the desire to toss away money on consumer goods that don’t add up to much is apparently universal. But the hope the eternal haze that blocks out the sun and fills their nostrils with black dust can somehow be escaped, even fleetingly, can make a $23 purchase of Canadian air seem well-nigh irresistible for some of Beijing’s more affluent inhabitants.
While the air quality in this region is nothing to beat the drums about – we also have days when those with feeble constitutions are advised to stay indoors because of high pollution levels – we’ve traveled quite a distance from the days when our air was not unlike that of Beijing’s. Pittsburgh’s history is rife with tales of smog so thick drivers needed to turn on headlights at midday, and of white-collar executives who needed to bring extra shirts with them to their downtown offices because the ones they arrived in would be speckled in black by lunchtime.
The Washington County community of Donora endured the notorious “Donora smog” in October 1948, when 20 people were killed and 7,000 made sick because of pungent smog generated by the industrial plants and a freak temperature inversion that caused the pollution to linger close to the ground. Undoubtedly many people in this region were sent to a premature death because of foul air, and the same thing is already happening in China – it’s estimated about 4,000 people die every day thanks to smog. It’s easy to see why – scientists say breathing it is the equivalent of smoking 40 cigarettes per day.
That we are no longer plagued by Beijing-style smog is not the result of a lucky accident or fortune smiling down upon us. Incidents like the Donora smog, and the realization the American quality of life was being impinged by air pollution, led to regulations to significanly reduce it and the creation of entities like the Environmental Protection Agency, which also keeps an eye on our water and protects our ecosystem.
We shouldn’t take these rules, and our environmental guardians, for granted.
To some who grew up in Southwest Pennsylvania when it was enveloped in smoke, it could be dirty air smells like security and well-being. The argument is frequently made that, in essence, the only way to keep jobs in the United States is if we race to the bottom of the environmental pile and spew pollutants, accept water that is compromised by contamination and otherwise pound our corner of the planet into submission, the consequences be damned.
But it’s not a choice of one or the other. We can have prosperity and meet the challenge of having a habitable planet at the same time. We don’t have to turn back the clock or allow all of our cities to devolve into something like Beijing.