{"id":27976,"date":"2008-11-14T11:27:47","date_gmt":"2008-11-14T18:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=27976"},"modified":"2008-11-14T11:27:47","modified_gmt":"2008-11-14T18:27:47","slug":"chinas-journey-to-the-dark-ages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2008\/11\/chinas-journey-to-the-dark-ages\/","title":{"rendered":"China&#8217;s Journey to the Dark Ages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An new report from the United Nations Environment Programme gives an alarming picture of the effects of air pollution in China and South Asia. In China alone, air pollution has caused $82 billion in economic losses, the report says. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/servlet\/story\/RTGAM.20081114.wclouds14\/BNStory\/International\/home\">From the Globe and Mail<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThe study says the toxic clouds &#8211; more than three kilometres thick &#8211; are contributing to a huge range of dangerous effects: extreme weather; damage to crops; melting of glaciers; the dimming of big cities; shifts in rainfall; massive economic losses; higher food prices; and a growing number of human deaths from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.<\/p>\n<p>Up to 25 per cent of the sunlight has disappeared in Chinese cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, India&#8217;s New Delhi and Karachi, Pakistan, the study concluded. In India, the dimming of cities has more than doubled since 1980, it said.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]  Achim Steiner, the UNEP executive director, said he expects the phenomenon of toxic brown clouds to be &#8220;firmly on the international community&#8217;s radar&#8221; as a result of the latest study, which was released yesterday. The clouds need &#8220;urgent and detailed research,&#8221; he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the full UNEP report <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unep.org\/Documents.Multilingual\/Default.asp?DocumentID=550&#038;ArticleID=5978&#038;l=en\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An new report from the United Nations Environment Programme gives an alarming picture of the effects of air pollution in China and South Asia. In China alone, air pollution has caused $82 billion in economic losses, the report says. From the Globe and Mail: The study says the toxic clouds &#8211; more than three kilometres [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2,132,6],"tags":[348,2563,1033],"class_list":["post-27976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-environmental-crisis","category-sci-tech","tag-air-pollution","tag-exporting-pollution","tag-united-nations","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v23.9 (Yoast SEO v23.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>China&#039;s Journey to the Dark Ages<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2008\/11\/chinas-journey-to-the-dark-ages\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"China&#039;s Journey to the Dark Ages\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An new report from the United Nations Environment Programme gives an alarming picture of the effects of air pollution in China and South Asia. 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