Beijing will soon have pollution police:
Officials in Beijing are taking steps toward tackling the city's long-standing smog problem with the creation of an environmental police force, according to state media. Spearheaded by Beijing's acting mayor Mayor Cai Qi, the political crackdown on burning fossil fuels comes amid a flurry of concern over the country's choking air pollution.
[...] The new environmental police would among other things, crack down on open-air barbecues, garbage incineration and biomass burning — areas previously overlooked by authorities, Xinhua reported. "Open-air barbecues, garbage incineration, biomass burning, dust from roads -- these acts of non-compliance with regulations are actually the result of lax supervision and weak law enforcement," Cai said. He did not say when the program would begin.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @05:00PM
Pollution cops is a cute story.
How about the $360 billion [csmonitor.com] they are spending over the next 4 years on renewable energy? While we drill babies in alaska, they are investing in the energy technology of the future. Tech that will pay dividends in the form of market dominance.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 10 2017, @05:18PM
So here's the thing.
The Chinese government knows the pollution is unsustainable and is making their most productive cities unlivable. But big piles of cheap, dirty energy were crucial to their core strategy of "catching up with the west".
I wouldn't be surprised if, as Chinese citizens start demanding better conditions and better wages, if all the super-cheap outsourcing companies decide to seek new shores to do their work. And it also won't surprise me if Trump takes credit for the fact that "fewer jobs are moving to china", as their economy begins the long process of maturing into what we think of as "first world".
This is a lot of predictions leaving a lot of room for me to be wrong, but my guess is China will see something very much like Japan's lost decade as their government struggles to deal with a world where their economy expands at 3-6% a year(instead of the double digits that were the 2000s).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @05:53PM
I wouldn't be surprised if, as Chinese citizens start demanding better conditions and better wages, if all the super-cheap outsourcing companies decide to seek new shores to do their work. And it also won't surprise me if Trump takes credit for the fact that "fewer jobs are moving to china", as their economy begins the long process of maturing into what we think of as "first world".
Oh so you already have the mental gymnastics figured out. That's some dedication.
However, there is a glaring problem with your hypothesis: China isn't the only backwards country offering tons of cheap labor. Taiwan has been doing it for decades and there are many other third world countries left to exploit. Even if China was to undergo the changes you think it will go (the people getting what they want in a one party state is totally going to happen!), the jobs will simply be going to Africa instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @06:09PM
You seem to be angry at ikan.
Yet, everything you wrote agrees with his analysis.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 10 2017, @06:20PM
Is it mental gymnastics to lay out an expectation for how things will play out given that we've already had years of moving towards this point?
Honestly, it could be. Far be from me to suggest I'm above bias.
It's far better to layout predictions first and then learn from being wrong than to do everything post-hoc and try to compel your worldview to be correct.
Like I already said, I laid out a bunch of predictions in that post, and even if I had more insight than everyone else about China(I don't), I'm likely to get at least a few of them wrong. The ones I do get wrong over the next 5ish years will be an excellent learning opportunity for me.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 10 2017, @07:20PM
seek new shores to do their work
Africa. China already moving aggressively in there.
There are minor little problems such as countries like Nigeria grow about enough food for 100M people today and if they gave up on cash crops and farmed every bit of land they could maybe grow enough food for 200M people, maybe, until the tractors wore out and they'd have to back to cash crops to buy the parts to farm. There is a slight problem in that their current population is believed to be about 175M and the UN hilariously looks at number of children per woman and age groups and comes up with estimates up to 1B around the turn of the next century, which is only possible if food appears from heaven for free because there's no way they're gonna grow more than 200M worth of food no matter what, and its probably going to be less. The other 800M are going to have to eat each other, I guess. Or move to Germany. 800M immigrants won't be an issue, LOL. At least its about 50:50 Islam and Christian so at least some will get along better with the "legacy Germans" than others.
I understand that quite a bit of American wheat ends up in Nigeria via indirect trade for their oil. Which will be long run out by 2100 and 1B population, LOL. Food production is much more likely to be sub 100M than over 1B in 2100.
Without "cultural imperialism from the west" their population seems stable long term around 50M to 75M range which gives you some idea of the cognitive disconnect when they're going to give birth to a billion around 2100. 950M aren't going to live, but they'll give birth to a billion sure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @05:22PM
Good! Let the Chinese spend their resources doing the research; the "West" can just copy their hard work.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday January 10 2017, @05:34PM
Copy ... then manufacture in China?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @06:05PM
> Good! Let the Chinese spend their resources doing the research; the "West" can just copy their hard work.
It took Japan decades to turn western research into market-leading production.
China still hasn't reached that point despite all their growth.
Expertise is something that takes at least a generation to develop. Knowledge isn't really in patents and scientific papers, its in the people who have spent their lives studying and developing their fields.
You can't copy people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @08:57PM
You can import talented people. Offer lots of money and pussy/dick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @10:00PM
You can't import an entire community.
Not everyone is a friendless hermit living in their mom's basement with no culture to be shocked out of.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday January 10 2017, @10:37PM
Yeah, but when whole communities are unable to eat, clothe themselves, or find any medical care?
There isn't jack shit in the U.S anymore, and there is zero hope of escaping brutal, brutal exploitation at the hands of the few growing ever richer. America is *ONLY* for the Owning Class and well paying jobs disappear faster each day while being replaced by much lower paying jobs in the service industry with no hope for advancement or escaping anything but the life of a slave.
For the time being, there are some very well trained and educated Americans looking for work after training their H1B replacements. Friends and families be damned, we all need to fucking eat. You bet your fucking ass rich countries could start importing Americans. Just pay a living wage and voila! Imported Americans Everywhere in those countries.
Friendless hermits in mom's basements? Those people are *SUBSIDIZED*. What happens when mom can no longer make it? When rents and mortgages go above 200% of the minimum (aka maximum) wage? What happens when social security is killed and the pension funds fail?
Make America Great Again has a fuck-ton of work in front of them when objectively America isn't in the top 10 for practically anything anymore. A lot of White Nationalists give shit while hootin' and hollerin' about how "great" their fucking country is while ignoring the stark reality that America hasn't been great for decades now.
Wake the fuck up. America is a third world country sliding deeper and farther into the shitter each day. Any work offer from an EU country is going to be categorically superior to one in the U.S, with categorically superior services offered to those citizens, and categorically superior education, medical, infrastructure, etc.
America is a shit heap. Which reminds me, I have meetings next week for several South American consulates to talk about asylum in their countries.
Fuck, even Cuba with a double embargo is objectively better than this fucking dumpster fire of a country.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @10:48PM
Just make sure to show off that wonderful glowing personality you've got on display to them and I'm sure you'll be a shoe-in. I'd be careful using the word asylum. You might want to actually look up the definition of that term. I don't think most countries will grant you asylum just for being butthurt about the last election.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday January 11 2017, @12:18AM
This has nothing to do with the last election per se, but does have quite a bit to do with the results and what they portend for our dark future. For that matter, I think I have a shot at political refugee when the Angry Orange Anus running/ruining everything is bringing Rudy's (burn in hell fucker) stop-and-frisk to the entire country. I will be dead the first time an officer tries that, so yeah, political refugee may be accurate. Are you *SURE* political refugee is inaccurate? The White Nationalists taking over government are only for *WHITE* people (stated, only believed by the idiots voting for them), not immigrants or those they deem undesirables for the plethora of reasons that they do. So, the truth is more like half the country has a decent shot at political refugee status somewhere else. Again, has nothing to do with WHO won an election, but WHAT platform is now getting underway, and HOW we are losing what did make America great in the past. Hard to say you don't deserve political refugee status when Palantir is building the systems to determine that you need to be in a politically motivated internment camp because you were the wrong flavor of brown.
Refugee would be more accurate, but still, political refugee isn't that far off the mark considering when my very field is becoming more illegal and unpatriotic by the day. That field being the one attempting to bring privacy and anonymity back to U.S citizens through "disruptive" technologies. It says volumes about us as a people when taking your privacy and anonymity back is a "disruptive" enterprise. Then we can get to the attacks against privacy and anonymity with the National Security Theater getting underway with at last 4 years of destroying Net Neutrality while removing zero knowledge services and endpoint-to-endpoint encryption as lawful and Constitutionally protected activities.
As for my personality, well what do you expect in a third world dumpster fire we call the United States now? I'm *happy* and wanting to move away from the country of my birth? Give me a fucking break. We all the right to be extremely and utterly pissed off, disillusioned, and disenfranchised with this shit heap of a country. I feel like I have more in common with the goals and ideas of CUBA! You know, actually taking care of their people! Fuck, Cuba feels more free and American than we are! What the fuck!
The truth is I could have asked for asylum *last* year with Obama still in charge. This country has made its way into darkness, at least as far as American labor is concerned, in the least 35 years. American Labor IS AMERICA, not the black soul'd mother fuckers in the Owning Class that have destroyed it. That was under BOTH Democratic and Republican control, btw. So how does our current situation really have anything to do with divisive politics? I've been saying we're a shit heap for quite some time now, and no matter how much you fuckers want to throw me into one political party or the next, the truth is that all politicians need to die as traitors. Not just one side. I've excoriated Obama as much as I have Trump, as much as I have Hillary.
If I don't get asylum, that is fine too. Nothing says I can't take a page from the Mexican playbook and be an illegal immigrant in a South American country. Much better than being a slave here, and the chances of surviving outside of America are becoming vastly better than surviving IN IT. I won't have medical either as an illegal immigrant, but hey, don't have it now right?
This new party of the White Nationalists is not a LEGITIMATE political party anyways, but a collection of the Owning Class manipulating the disenfranchised into a fear and hate induced frenzy, with the already hate-filled racists and bigots joining the band wagon. I used to refuse to believe racism really existed until nearly half the voters came out as White Nationalists. So what happens when your country is taken over by such disreputable filth? Ohhhhh, that's right. We're just butthurt. It's not a soul sick slide into watching your country set on fire while losing whatever integrity it had left, it's political butthurt instead.
Yeah, as if discussing internment camps for Americans is legitimate in any way, shape, or form. It's not butthurt, but realizing that America is now lost and you need to figure out how to survive its collapse.
Keep saying that all opposition is just political butthurt, and you do yourself a tremendous disservice. There are any number of reasons to claim political refugee status.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday January 11 2017, @01:43AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 10 2017, @06:12PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 10 2017, @06:12PM
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 10 2017, @06:27PM
Because market dominance is the be-all and end-all purpose of human existence, right? "For one brief shining moment, we made shareholders a lot of value" as the cartoon says...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @07:05PM
oh so all the pollution is from people cooking some food outside etc, not the companies who have paid off government officials. now the same corrupt thieves are going to send out ecopigs to steal from the poor.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday January 10 2017, @07:50PM
When it comes to smog inefficient combustion does have an out-sized impact.
Even before environmental concerns it's in the best interests of e.g. power plants to burn efficiently because that means they need to use less fuel.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday January 10 2017, @09:21PM
When it comes to smog inefficient combustion does have an out-sized impact.
I see you may have experienced the thermal de-polymerization experiments I conduct when I BBQ in the late summer as the pear tree in my back yard drops about 100 lbs of shitty bug eaten pears. I highly recommend meat that has been smoked over 10lbs of pears though.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @08:20PM
The environmental police force are said to be organized into five units, each denoted by a unique ring they wear. These police, or "Planeteers" as they have come to be called, are tasked with helping defend the planet from environmental disasters and making an effort to educate mankind so-as to prevent other disasters from happening.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday January 10 2017, @11:01PM
Excellent! They could start by planting some trees [youtube.com].