A puff of hot air?

In an effort to stave off environmental degradation, the Chinese government recently announced its latest measure to disperse the country’s pollution: five "ventilation corridors" in the capital city of Beijing. The idea behind the new wind tunnels is to increase the general airflow around the city, allowing the smog that often lingers above the city in a dense haze to disperse, thus both cleaning up and cooling down Beijing. Until the pollution problem is attacked at its source, these wind tunnels ultimately represent a lack of commitment on the part of the Chinese government to live up to its environmental obligations as put forth by the COP21 in Paris, as they offer a way simply to mitigate the problem rather than advance a solution.

Pollution in China is alsotroublingfrom an economic standpoint. Government-mandated factory shutdowns to mitigate smog cost the nation an estimated 6.5 percent of its annual GDP. Furthermore, pollution has infiltrated to the essential agricultural sector, contaminating as much as 20 percent of China’s arable soil. Thus, ridding the nation of pollution is of paramount importance for all facets of China’s quality of life and economy.

The city government of Beijing has put forth a multi-tiered plan to limit the effects of the pervasive smog and pollution. Centered around the 500-meter wide ventilation corridors, the plan also includes strict maintenance of the city’s green spaces and a limit on building height in order to rid the structures that limit air flow and thus trap pollutants. The goal is to diffuse the smog around the city. However, as Wang Bing, a Beijing-based author,lamented, "this isn’t controlling pollution. It’s diverting it" — and this is under the assumption that the corridors work, which remains questionable in and of itself. Even the limit on building heights, perhaps the most straightforward aspect of the government’s plan, has debatable impacts: since much of the city is already highly developed, limiting future building heights will clearly not bring many net benefits.

At the Paris Climate Change Conference held in November,China, according to CCTV-America,"pledgedto slash its carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 60–65 percent of 2005 levels by 2030."

Pouring money into these ventilation corridors simply diverts attention away from what should be China’s number one priority. It can be said that any step by the notorious polluter of the PRC, regardless of magnitude, is a step in the right direction. While there is truth in that argument, the government must understand that these corridors are only a mitigating measure. The pollution problem still must be attacked at its source: transportation, factories and power plants.

Dan Sullivan is a freshman from Southold, N.Y. He can be reached at dgs4@princeton.edu.