Beijing Pollution Threatens Success of Summer Games (kills estimated 656,000 people every year)

[DuaneBidoux]

Source: CNBC

Visitors to this summer’s Beijing Olympics will get an immediate lesson in the environmental cost of China's break-neck economic development: the worst air pollution in the world, which kills an estimated 656,000 people every year.

“There's simply no experience quite like it," recalled Don Wyatt, a China expert from Middlebury College, about deplaning at Beijing International Airport. "One's throat instantly constricts. One's eyes instantly water. Things improve very little once one exits the airport. The rest of it is all about adaptation, learning to cope.”

Read more: http://www.cnbc.com/id/25351251

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Republicans need to be forced to live here to experience the cost of not taking care of the environment.

They also don't talk about it but I bet there won't be too many track and field records this year--Oxygen is generally considered somewhat vital for running.

[Systematic Chaos]

1. "Olympics? What Olympics?" about sums up my attitude towards this epic clusterfuck.

Yup, that about says it all. :eyes:

[Mythsaje]

2. That's going to require a few new events

the 100 meter gasp
and the high jump with breathing apparatus

Is there enough oxygen to keep the torch alight? One has to wonder.

[Systematic Chaos]

3. Didn't you hear? They're using a big log of high-sulfur coal!

:woohoo:

[Dr.Phool]

6. What happened to synchronized dying?

Did they cancel it?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. Meh, that's about average.

Air pollution kills about 2.5-3 million every year world wide. Given China's population, that's about par for the course.

I wonder which is worse, Beijing now, Mexico City in the '70s, or LA back in the thirties.

[balantz]

5. Place your bets!

How many a noble athlete drops? How can they be expected to perform their best? Or compete without dying?

I must be getting old when the world makes less and less sense to me.

Capitalism in Communist China, Olympics in China, borrowing money from China to fund our illegal wars, America sliding further into fascism...things get more and more macabre!

[conspirator]

7. Good! These days they should be called Corporate Games instead n/t

[Jack_DeLeon]

8. Are the Olympics going on?

I havent actually heard anything about the games, not that I would watch them this year anyway. Fuck China.

[Pastiche423]

9. Has anyone seen the reports

of the thousands of bulldozed homes in China as they are getting ready for the Olympics? (Kinda reminiscent of what a town in Africa did before whistle ass' arrival. The same trip where a memo wrt Valerie Plame Wilson was "discovered" on the plane.)

A man was interviewed that was staying in his home w/his dying mother. He was pleading w/them to consider his dying mother. The home has been bulldozed. Don't know what happened to the man or his mother.

What I want to know, is what motherfucker chose China for the Olympics? I want his/her name, damnit!