Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Singapore vs. Linfen 临汾

A little bit about pollution in China and my 2c on the topic

Did you know that there's a city in PR China named Linfen and it's almost as big as Singapore? If you didn't know, then now you know. But that's about it with the similarities. Because while Singapore has been given nicknames like the Garden city or the Green city...

...Linfen has been given the nickname the dirtiest city in the world (or on earth). I didn't know about Linfen before, but when they showed it on German TV today, I couldn't believe my eyes. Toxic smog every day all the time! How can people even breathe? The scariest part was the high rate of phisically and mentally disabled children. Linfen is in the centre of the Chinese coal industry and China is addicted to coal. I guess it won't get better too soon. Here are some shocking photos:

I guess you Singaporeans can be proud of your green city ;)

Of course there's much more to Linfen than just the pollution, you can browse some photos here. But for the sake of their own people, China has to do something, especially for the children, who didn't choose to live in such a horribly polluted city. I'm really not too sure, if global warming is caused by men and if all the predictions about 2100 will be true. Seems like global warming has become a new religion for some, I'm more of a sceptic. However, pollution is man made and we have to do (and we can do) something about that now.

Did you know about Linfen? How is pollution in your city?

Photo sources: [1 by MKL 2005][2, 3, 4, 6 by www.vbs.tv][5 by sheilaz413][7 by Wu Hong/EPA]
Links: [Linfen on Wikipedia][About Linfen, many photos and text in Chinese]

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