Foreign Policy Blogs

James Fallows on L.A. versus Beijing

While many of us are looking towards the sea, wondering how the oil mess will get cleaned up, I thought I’d direct reader attention up from sad waters.

James Fallows at the Atlantic has been adding to a useful series on his blog (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) regarding the ever-improving air quality in U.S. cities and what that might mean for developing countries today.

Consider 2 photos:

L.A. Smog

Smog in Los Angeles, 1950s

Beijing Smog

Smog in Beijing, Present Day

Why is this good news for Beijing? Well, because it shows that in fact things can be cleaned up. This is the same lesson as taught by the improvement in London air quality from Dickens’s time to now, or in Chicago’s environment, or Tokyo’s. And why is it not so consoling? Because it took decades for LA and California — and they were already rich when they were starting. They also were not just on the cusp, as Beijing and the rest of China are, of a huge boom in automobile ownership and the movement of the peasantry into mechanized urban life. So maybe the proper sentiment is not so much “good news” as “good luck!”

Many readers have chimed in noting the role that basic technological advancements have played:

Indeed, LA and California were richer in the 1950s and 60s than China is today, but the level of pollution control technology is immensely different.  The key technological advance for automobiles — the catalytic converter — wasn’t even put into production until the 1970s.

Considering just the last two decades, the EPA standard for nitrogen oxide emissions (a smog precursor) from passenger cars in 1994 was 0.6 grams per mile. In 1999 it was reduced to 0.3 grams per mile.  In 2004 it was reduced to 0.07 grams per mile. Each of these has been met without much trouble. And it will be dropping even lower in the future. Granted, China is not adopting the latest U.S. or European technology, but even technology from a few years ago is drastically cleaner than what L.A. had in the early days of the war on smog. And that doesn’t even get into advances in battery technology, hybrids or diesel engines.

Beijing has already demonstrated some of the benefits of “leapfrog development,” whereby developing countries skip the worst (i.e. the dirtiest, less efficient, more expensive) phases of economic growth.  Instead, they are able to move directly to more advanced, cleaner technologies, already brought forth by richer nations.

Still, while the pace of pollution reversal has quickened in recent years, today’s overly smoggy cities should practice modest optimism.  The U.S. experience shows that improvements in harmful air emissions are likely, but it require a continual commitment to quantitative analysis, widespread innovation and a very long term vision; one that is measured in decades.