
The big city breath
What happens when cars and factories clean up
An interesting thing came to happen in Beijing, China recently. In August, as part of the world's 70:th year WWII celebration China allowed its citizens in highly polluted Beijing, clear blue (and healthy, pristine) skies for a couple of weeks. How did they do it? They halted production at several hundred's of factories and ordered half of the city's cars to a complete halt.
Now don't shrug your shoulders at what was essentially a meaningless political gesture, but instead look beyond this short-lived fresh breath of healthy air, to the near, worldwide future. Because what Beijing did for a few brief weeks, shows us our sustainable, and healthy worldwide future where cities even as polluted and unhealthy as Beijing instead provides us all with pristine, healthy, non polluted air to live and breath in.

Photography by Mike Koontz
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The Remedy
China showed us the quick, worldwide fix for better health
No, you are correct, there is not a single city that would permanently halt all or even half of it´s cars, and stop half or more of it´s factories and polluting industries. All too true.
But, what will happen over the next five decades is that polluting cars will increasingly be replaced by electric cars that are, as a bonus much healthier, non-polluting cars.
And the change for industrial factories is already happening worldwide, slowly yes, but still already happening. And over the next five decades you will see a surprising amount of industries polluting far less than they do today.From energy production to pulp and paper to construction and gadget and clothes production all the way to farming and housing. What Beijing forced for a brief few weeks, that is all our wonderful and globally healthy near future waiting just around the corner
From unhealthy air
[To bluish and healthy skies]
On the morning of the World War II parade, the air quality index, an international standard for measuring air pollution managed to hit a pristine 17, an abstract number that tells you that the people of Beijing was now breathing and living in a city with very healthy air. Healthy air and clear blue skies.
24 hours however, after the factories and cars where allowed back to business as usual, the same city was back to an unhealthy air quality index of 160.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, air pollution at that level means that "Everyone may begin to experience some adverse health effects, and members of the sensitive groups may experience more serious effects.". Negative health effects we now know includes not just increased risk for cancer and diabetes, but dementia and cardiac arrest, depression, obesity and a long range of life threatining issues as well as quality of life diminishing factors. All in all, people living in cities with severe air pollution dies years ahead of what they should, and they suffer for decades before that with bad health in both body and mind.

Photography by CNN China
Ready, Set go!.
In other words, what China showed the world is how rapid we can, and eventually will move to a far healthier world once the change to a more sustainable way of life have started to take effect. And it also showed us just how quickly that change in increased health and quality of life will come as a result of the sustainable, worldwide changes that are already happening.
Best of all, Beijing showed us all how easy and instant that change actually is to make, and that, no matter how slow and unwilling some are to change, is a very positive thing for us all.
It also highlights the biggest benefits in general for people and society behind every individual car and house that moves from unsustainable choices to sustainable ones. Changing from oil and coal to solar, water and wind does not only make for a better long-term financial future, but every such change also improves your and everybody else's health too, and that is not only something that will greatly improve your personal life but cause an enormous and important societal change in health care, economy, elderly care and all.
Just as how self-driving cars is not just about a technological change, but a major change and reduction in worldwide car related deaths and injuries.
But neither of what I just wrote of course negates that we are also entering a time where our global population, and thus cars and factories and production, will increase substantially. That increase in numbers of course only makes it even more important that we embrace as rapid a change towards a sustainable world as possible.
Writer and photography
Michael A Koontz
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