To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night.
–YODA, Dark Rendezvous
China's Urban Air Kills Rural Plants
As people in Beijing and northern China struggle with severe air pollution this winter, the toxic air is also making life hard for plants and even food crops of China, say researchers who have been looking at how China's plants are affected by air pollution.
Beijing's extreme smog event this week has made headlines, with the American Embassy calling the pollution levels “hazardous” and Beijing writer Zheng Yuanjie blogging that “the air smells like sulfur perfume, as the capital city currently looks like a poisonous huge gas can,” according to a report on Al Jazeera.
BLOG: 7 of 10 Most Air-Polluted Cities Are in China
“In the last 50 years there has been a 16-fold increase in ozone pollution” in the Beijing area, said Hanqin Tian of Auburn University in Alabama, who studies the effects of China's pollution and climate change on plants. He said the soup of pollutants, including harmful sulfur and nitrogen compounds “is definitely expanding into new areas; into the countryside.”
Phi Beta Iota: Of all the countries on the Earth, China has the most to gain from creating a national Open Source Agency (OSA) that connects all of its citizens and all of its managers across all of its organizations. One does wonder if their national leaders will see the strategic value of comprehensive and persistent whole earth intelligence with integrity. It would certainly be a shame to have them repeat the mistakes of the Americans….time is the one strategic variable that cannot be bought nor replaced. Once true cost economics are embraced, it changes everything — strategy, policy, acquisition, operations. It changes means, it changes ways, it changes ends.
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Google Images / China Polution
