Yesterday's post was about how pollution in Los Angeles is being traced to Asia. Well it turns out that not only is the pollution coming out of Asia being felt in other parts of the world, but the pollution is also impacting the weather: BBC article - Global impact of Asia's pollution.
It's an interesting article because one naturally has to draw the conclusion that if the pollution coming out of Asia is causing world-wide problems as China gets bigger, than it stands to reason that pollution coming out of the United States and other developed countries for the last 100 years has already done significant damage and has impacted the air quality of what should have been the pristine air quality of third world nations in the past.
Hum... let's look at some UN stats. CO2 emissions 2004:
United States: 5987.98 mio.tonnes 621.86 per km2
China: 5010.17 mio.tonnes 522.06 per km2
One of my favorite books is Ecotopia where part of the Western United States secedes from the Union to do their own thing in a more eco-friendly manner. But it's clear that no nation is an island when it comes to pollution.
As technology gets better and the satellite network improves and more and more data about who is responsible for what is available, could the fight to breath/exist/live actually lead to cleaner air standards by which the entire earth's population? How will countries be held accountable? If another planet like earth was ever found and people colonized it, would standards of pollution be one of the first things addressed?
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