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Factors such as central heating systems dependent on coal mean that northern China experiences frequent bouts of toxic air, the latest episode of serious pollution in eastern China is a reminder that the rest of the country is not immune to the dangers.

Environmental officials blamed the poor conditions on the lack of strong winds to flush out bad air and the growing number of vehicles pumping out pollutants, according to the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post. The newspaper said more favorable weather conditions that could help reduce pollution are expected to begin Sunday.

“outsourcing production to China does not always relieve consumers in the United States — or for that matter many countries in the Northern Hemisphere — from the environmental impacts of air pollution.”

The movement of air pollutants associated with the production of goods in China for the American market has resulted in a decline in air quality in the Western United States

“Trade changes the location of production and thus affects emissions.”

“Dust, ozone and carbon can accumulate in valleys and basins in California and other Western states,” the statement said.

Black carbon is linked to asthma, cancer, emphysema, and heart and lung disease.

in 2006, sulfate concentrations in the Western United States increased as much as 2 percent, and ozone and carbon monoxide levels also increased slightly because of the transportation of pollutants from emissions that resulted from the manufacture of goods for export to the United States.

The amount of air pollution in the Western United States resulting from emissions from China is still very small compared with the amount produced by sources in the United States that include traffic and domestic industries.

They estimated that in 2006, China’s exporting of goods to the United States was responsible for 7.4 percent of production-based Chinese emissions for sulfur dioxide, 5.7 percent for nitrogen oxides, 3.6 percent for black carbon and 4.6 percent for carbon monoxide.

. Coal-burning factories were the biggest sources of pollutants and greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming.

“This is a reminder to us that a significant percentage of China’s emissions of traditional pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions are connected to the products we buy and use every day in the U.S. We should be concerned, not only because this pollution is harming the citizens of China, but because it’s damaging the air quality in parts of the U.S.”

So the overall percentages of economic output might not by themselves be fair indicators of the importance of exports to the Chinese economy.

Firing the advisory panel and opting not to pursue a more stringent particulate standard were in keeping with the administration of President Donald Trump’s dim view of environmental regulation. By one tally compiled by The New York Times, 72 regulations on air, water and soil pollution, climate change and ecosystems have been canceled or weakened, with an additional 27 in progress. EPA leadership has sidelined or ignored research by agency scientists, and career staff are censoring their reports to avoid terms like “climate change” out of fear of repercussions from political staff. Many of the changes involve narrowing the scope of science, and scientists, that contribute to policy, experts said.

The pollution comes from cars, power plants, wildfires and anything that burns fossil fuels. When people take a breath, the particles can lodge deep into their lungs and even enter the bloodstream. The pollutant causes health complications that can lead people to die earlier than they would have, and it is linked to conditions such as COPD, asthma and diabetes.

Three weeks ago, the agency finalized another rule allowing certain polluters to follow weaker air emissions standards. Wheeler has said the environmental rollbacks will continue if Trump is reelected.

“The lower the concentrations of PM2.5, the fewer people need to see the general practitioner. So improving air quality not only benefits public health, but also ensures the financial sustainability of the social security system.”

The study also found that more tree and grass cover in a neighbourhood was associated with less demand for GP and hospital visits. This was especially true of cities and accords with wider evidence on green space in urban areas.

The World Health Organization already recommends that we have access to 0.5 hectares (1.2 acres) of public green space, about two-thirds the size of a football pitch, within 300 metres of our homes.

The urban forester Cecil Konijnendijk recently suggested a 3-30-300 rule of thumb for urban forestry and urban greening – every citizen should be able to see at least three trees (of a decent size) from their home, have 30% tree-canopy cover in their neighbourhood and not live more than 300 metres from a park or green space.

“Based on these results, we need more, not fewer initiatives, like Barcelona’s Superblocks. Political pressure to reverse urban planning initiatives that reduce air pollution and increase tree cover seem ridiculous.”

NO2 levels also dropped in South Korea, which has long struggled with high emissions from its large fleet of coal-fired power plants but also from nearby industrial facilities in China.The country has avoided putting entire regions under lockdown but is meticulously tracing and isolating suspected coronavirus cases.

The World Health Organization describes NO2 as “a toxic gas which causes significant inflammation of the airways” at concentrations above 200 micrograms per cubic metre. Pollution particles may also be a vector for pathogens, as well as exacerbating existing health problems. The WHO is now investigating whether airborne pollution particles may be a vector that spreads Covid-19 and makes it more virulent.

Monks, the former chair of the UK government’s science advisory committee on air quality, said that a reduction in air pollution could bring some health benefits, though they were unlikely to offset loss of life from the disease.

The source is not yet clear. One possibility is a slowdown of activity in Italy’s industrial heartland. Another factor is likely to be a reduction in road traffic, which accounts for the biggest share of nitrogen dioxide emissions in Europe.

Although the UK is more than a week behind Italy in terms of the spread of the disease and the government’s response, roadside monitors already show significantly reduced levels of pollution at hotspots such as Marylebone in London.

“What I think will come out of this is a realisation - because we are forced to - that there is considerable potential to change working practices and lifestyles. This challenges us in the future to think, do we really need to drive our car there or burn fuel for that,” said Monk.

the benefits are really vivid, they are really clear. Everybody agrees that the world will be better off the faster we move. And that really wasn’t the case five or 10 years ago. There was much more muddled analysis and messaging then. And I think we have to take advantage of the new unanimity and not let people fall back on the logic of status quo bias and incumbency and just think that change is expensive and difficult

david wallace-wellsMy basic feeling is that the changes that we need are all systemic. And so the things that individuals can do to make that change are primarily through the political realm, not through their individual behavior. If we want to really halt this problem and get a handle on it, it means large, large scale changes that are beyond the capacity of individuals to enact on their own.

jane coastonHow do we get our house in order? What do I as an individual or the people listening to this podcast, how do I make this happen on my level? Knowing all of that, what do I do? What do I personally need to do? Give me a thing to do, Genevieve!

If you want to learn more about personal responsibility, I recommend Jason Marks’s article in the Sierra Club magazine, “Yes, actually, individual responsibility is essential to solving the climate crisis,” and the New York Times guest essay by Auden Schendler, “Worrying About Your Carbon Footprint is Exactly What Big Oil Wants You to Do.”

david wallace-wells

I don’t know that we have to all take on a feeling of guilt for the rise of G.D.P. under neoliberalism, because I don’t know that most of us have actually even seen that money.

ultimately, the things that we need to do to really get a hold of this are way bigger than cutting your food emissions by 10 percent or 50 percent or whatever. It’s like, the three of us in this room, we can’t build an electric grid, a solar farm. We can’t make sure that there are Tesla charging stations all across the country. We can’t re-imagine land use policy or agricultural policy. We can’t put an honest price on carbon so that when you’re buying gas, you’re actually paying for the environmental damage that’s being caused or when you’re buying an airplane ticket. Those are just things that are well outside of our capacity to control

jane coastonCould you explain what climate justice means to an audience that is me?genevieve guentherBasically, it means that the global north historically has been responsible for the vast majority of carbon pollution. And the global south has been responsible for almost none of it. Since 1990, for example, the top 10 percent of earners have been responsible for 52 percent of the growth of global emissions. And the poorest, 50 percent, who largely live in the global south, have been responsible for about 7 percent of global emissions. But that hasn’t grown at all. Historically, they have contributed nothing to the exponential growth of emissions and the increased and accelerating global heating that we’re already seeing. So the idea of climate justice is that global north nations have a moral responsibility to reduce their emissions first and faster so that there is some room left in whatever carbon budget we still have for the global south to pull themselves out of poverty.

jane coastonDavid, what do you make of what Genevieve said about the messaging about good and evil there?

david wallace-wellsI would say even more importantly, we can’t set our standard at extinction. It’s not like if we survive and avoid extinction, that that’s a success. There is huge suffering between here and there. And every degree of temperature rise is going to create more suffering. And every degree we avoid can help us avoid that.

The climate crisis has begun in the United States, too. But the real violence of it is in the global south. And I would argue that the global north doesn’t see it because the news media isn’t reporting on it and because the kind of white supremacy prevents people in this country from really recognizing that this is a violence that would feel unimaginable if it happened to their children.

genevieve guentherOK, so the first part is understanding why we have to do this. And I would argue that most Americans still don’t know enough about global heating and the climate crisis.

jane coastonYeah, but and a benefit when? Because I think a lot of this messaging relies on something that, in general, people do not like, which is, you may need to do a thing or change a thing about your life for a future that we have not yet defined. From a messaging perspective, how do we message the urgency

To think about the concrete impacts, 350,000 Americans, it’s estimated, die every single year from the air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels. That is a death toll literally equal to the 2020 death toll from COVID.

Or is it going to take so long that, in fact, things are going to spiral out of control?

within the space of a few years, by simply refusing to accept their own impotence, they have literally remade the entire landscape of global climate politics. Like in the U.S., when we have Joe Biden who Sunrise gave an F to in the primary, talking about this as an existential threat, that is because the protests worked. And they worked in an incredibly short amount of time

I personally think the high consumption, and particularly the flying of people who are in the public eye, trying to communicate the urgency of the climate crisis, is incredibly destructive to building a political movement. They’re actually doing something extremely counterproductive in my interpretation. They’re reinforcing everybody’s cognitive dissonance with their behavior, which is also a form of speech. They’re communicating that they’re not willing to make transformative changes and not willing to support transformative policies, and that, in fact, you need to use fossil fuels even to do climate work. And so, for me, I feel like the people who need to worry about their carbon footprints insofar as anybody does are the 1 percent and people in the climate movement.

here are huge, huge health consequences from this pollution. It may be the case that air pollution may even be a bigger crisis than climate change. That is how dramatic these impacts are. They happen to be caused largely by the same thing so we can solve them at the same time, but we’re talking about rising rates of respiratory disease and coronary disease and cancers of all kinds and Alzheimer’s and dementia and ADHD and criminality and premature birth and low birth weight. And just every aspect of human flourishing is damaged by the pollution that is produced by the burning of fossil fuels

david wallace-wellsIt’s really, really stark, as Genevieve lays out, that it is the wealthy countries of the world and the wealthy people of the world who have engineered this crisis. So whenever we hear about the problem of India, the problem of electrifying sub-Saharan Africa, these are problems. We need to figure them out and do them clean in a way that doesn’t imperil the future of the planet. But those are only problems that we have to deal with now because of the development patterns that countries like ours and across northern Europe went through over the last few decades and centuries.

Half of all emissions in the entire history of humanity have come in the last 30 years. Now since Al Gore published his first book on warming, you know I often joke it’s since the premiere of “Friends,” which means that, actually, the people who have done the lion’s share of the damage to the planet are alive today. And it is true, of course, that the people who have been running Shell and Chevron and ExxonMobil have much more responsibility than I do or Genevieve does or Jane does. But it is also the case that all of us have benefited in significant ways from economic activity that has been powered by fossil fuels and to which we could have raised louder objections earlier.

genevieve guentherI think it’s worthwhile to point out that the vast majority of Americans are literally going to be richer once we have decarbonized, because their electricity, their heating, their transportation, and their health care costs are going to go down significantl

genevieve guentherPick one. Do it once a week, and things will change. First thing is vote. You can’t do that once a week, but vote in every election. Vote

some of the actions that you’re talking about, the individual actions, I think can be useful in terms of generating small scale political energy that can eventually sort of trickle up into politics. Leaders see that we’re making changes. They see that we’re demanding changes. They may feel more comfortable making those changes themselves.

We as a culture need to normalize that it’s actually healthy not to be happy in the face of climate change and that it doesn’t mean we’re failed Americans. It means that we’re actually human beings who are having an appropriate and ethical moral response to the suffering that is coming in the pipe for everybody, also our own children

Or you can donate to groups that are working on electoral politics directly, like the Environmental Voter Project or Stacey Abrams’s Verified Action

david wallace-wellsHonestly, the person I was talking to was the United States. I mean, that is the perspective that we have as a country. And as guilty as I feel as responsible as I feel, as I’m sure, Genevieve, and to some extent, Jane, you feel, all of us are actually behaving in ways that are imposing that kind of suffering on people elsewhere in the world. It’s almost unavoidable, given the systems that we live in today. And that is really horrifying. But I think the more clearly that we can see that, the more likely we are to be demanding real change of our leaders and the systems in which we live

david wallace-wellsWell, some of them can matter in limiting your carbon footprint. So if you don’t eat beef, if you don’t take airplanes, if you drive an electric car, you’re probably pretty far along in reducing your own carbon footprint. And that is one measure of climate responsibility, carbon responsibility

The ability to put your preferred candidates in office is a huge part of the climate fight

david wallace-wellsI think that this story is one about our responsibility towards other humans, in which collectively, human behavior has imperiled the future of the planet. I think as a result, we have to talk about it in terms of good and evil, that there are very obvious sides.

And it is borne disproportionately by Black and Brown and poor people.

genevieve guentherI actually agree with David. This is a systemic problem that is only going to be solved by governments and large corporations leading the transformation of our economies to zero-emission economies. That said, rich people across the globe have a responsibility, a personal responsibility, to reduce their discretionary emissions, to reduce their consumption, both for climate justice reasons and also simply because we need them to do it if we’re going to meet our emissions targets and halt global heating.

what is hopeful about these net zero pledges, even as they are greenwashing, is the fact that these companies feel pressure to make them at all, right? This is a sea change in politics. If they can’t actually transform, they’re going to be pushed out, and new incumbents are going to come in. And the question is, can we do this fast enough to halt global warming in time to preserve much of the habitable world?

The second piece is a kind of climate communication that shows people how this is going to affect them. Most people think of this as a crisis that’s for the global south or for the distant future or for our grandchildren’s grandchildren or whatever. And it’s up to every single communicator, as far as I’m concerned, to make it clear in really concrete embodied terms what this crisis is going to mean for the children who are alive today.

When I started writing about climate five years ago, I would not have thought that this kind of political change was at all possible. We are living through what is a genuinely unprecedented global climate awakening, which has totally changed the landscape of what is possible. And it really has made the world and the future look sunnier

famously last year, Drew Shindell, who’s an air pollution expert at Duke, testified before U.S. Congress saying that a green transition of the American energy system would entirely pay for itself through the public health benefits of cleaner air. You could put aside all of the climate impacts. You could put aside all the benefits of cheaper electricity. And just because we would be healthier as a result, even in the U.S. where air is already clean, the dollars and cents would add up and make that a very, very clear win for all of us

here’s another thing you can do. You can organize your workplace to ask your company to make greener business decisions or to lobby Congress for climate policies

once they’re in office, keep pressuring them. Call their D.C. offices. Call their local offices. Send them emails regularly

he dynamic is even more horrifying elsewhere in the world where other countries have much dirtier air than we do. Estimates are as high as 10 million people globally dying of air pollution every single year, 8.7 million of them from the burning of fossil fuels

then the third piece of that is really showing how making these changes that are required would be such a benefit to them.

that you have to live like a monk to make this work. That may have been, to some degree, true 25, 30 years ago when the alternative systems that we now see right around the corner were much farther away in the distance and much more expensive. But it just isn’t the case now that to green our economy will require an enormous burden

when we think of it simply in terms of, is the economy going to grow faster or is it going to go slower, I think we really, really miss the huge, huge public health consequences of continuing running the systems as we are running them today, and also the huge benefits we would get from getting off those systems

david wallace-wellsIn 2070, we’re in a net zero world. Nobody has a carbon footprint. So having more kids is not going to make one difference in either direction. And I think we’re still in a place where we can keep that goal in mind and fight to make that possible so that we don’t have to do things like reduce family size.

I had this interaction just before the pandemic at an event I did. I keep thinking about it. I think about it maybe every week, maybe every day, where I gave a talk about looking at how dire some of these situations could be. And afterwards, somebody came up to me who assured me that he was not a climate denier. And then he said, so really, how bad is it going to get? And I said, well, at two degrees, we’re talking about 150 million people dying of air pollution. And he said, but that’s out of 8 billion. And I said, well, yeah, I mean, I’m not talking about the total extinction of the human race here, but 150 million is 150 million. That’s 25 Holocausts. And he said, but out of 8 billion.

the true, are we going to make humans extinct, kind of futures that we were talking about as slim but real possibilities a few years ago, I think are much, much less likely today. And that is in large part the result of climate protests by people who started their activism within the last few years.

genevieve guentherAnd just say that the word “responsibility” has two different definitions, right? There’s the sense of responsibility as guilt. Who is responsible for this crime? Who has to pay the price? But then there’s responsibility as duty. Who’s going to take responsibility for cleaning up this mess?

There is a very small ask that can be made, which is just to support the people who support aggressive climate action. We’re talking about massive, immediate, or quasi immediate payback for all of the investments we’re making.

If you don’t have the time to do that, donate money. Donate money to organizations that are putting their bodies on the line. Here are some of them— Sunrise, Fridays for Future

finally, one of the most impactful things that you can do is simply talk about climate change in your social networks, especially when it feels most socially awkward and embarrassing. Because unless we continue to break the kind of conspiracy of climate silence that allows people to look away, we’re not actually going to have the kind of pressure internally and psychologically in people that will help them join the climate movemen

genevieve guentherWell, let me contextualize this for a moment. The concept of the carbon footprint is actually a legitimate concept in sustainability research. It was developed by two researchers in the 1990s

What is the 1 percent? In the United States, I would define the 1% as people making $450,000 a year and above. So it’s hard to imagine how much consumption is normalized among these people. It is not at all considered wasteful to buy a new SUV every two or three years as new models come out. It is not all considered extravagant to fly up to 20 times a year. It is not at all horrific to buy an entirely new wardrobe two or three times a year and throw it all away. In fact, this is considered a signal that you are in the rich group and that you are living your best life.

it actually has to be done right now. We don’t get another shot at this.

Do my personal actions, be they avoiding plastic straws or composting or calculating my personal carbon footprint, as oil companies seem to really want me to do, or switching light bulbs or becoming a vegetarian, in the scheme of averting climate change or mitigating climate change, do those actions really matter?

I think that there are certain actors who have played hugely disproportionate, often toxic, roles in that story, namely the fossil fuel industry and their allies in political power, not just in the U.S. but all around the world.

that’s not to say that that person is as culpable as the CEOs of ExxonMobil. Obviously, there’s a huge spectrum of culpability, but I think that a huge majority of Americans are understandably viewed by people elsewhere in the world as contributing to the problem as opposed to contributing to the solution, and that we should not dismiss that judgment because we happen to think, well, I was just doing it for myself, or I was just acting in the system in which I live. We should take seriously that judgment and try to think about what we can do to sort of make it right, so to speak.

But BP extracted this concept from academia and created a multimillion dollar campaign, trying to change the discourse of the climate crisis and make, as you said, Jane, everybody feel responsible for causing the climate crisis, but also feeling responsible for solving it by doing things like no longer driving or no longer flying or no longer eating beef or turning off lights or using plastic straws. And as David said, this is impossible. Even if every single one of us brought our personal carbon emissions down to zero, we would not halt global heating.

number two, join a campaign or an activist group. There are local chapters of groups called the Sunrise Movement and 350.org in many communities. If you’re really hardcore, you can join Extinction Rebellion

It will require an investment, but that will sort of pay for itself in the relatively short term. And so we’re now in a situation where a lot of people often think that moving into a sustainable future is going to make their lives suck. And the truth is that just isn’t the case, but that is what the companies that are profiting from the status quo would like you to think because nobody wants their lives to suck.

I think we need to really tell the climate story as a story of good and evil because these people have known for decades what their products were going to do. And not only did they keep producing and selling fossil fuels, they lied about it. They lied about what they knew. And they tried to do everything they could to capture our political system just to sustain their own wealth and power. I think that’s pretty bad. It’s criminal. It’s absolutely criminal.

some of the changes that you’re talking about, people are compelled to do because they don’t want to feel a part of the ugliness of the destruction of the planet, more than because they’re making a rational calculation about how best to use their time and what they can do that has the highest impact

But the fossil fuel industry, as part of their disinformation campaign, wants to make everyone feel helpless, feel overwhelmed, and wants to shift our attention away from the political action that has a chance of resolving the climate crisis to what can’t possibly work, which is focusing on our carbon footprint.

I just don’t think that that’s the end all, be all of it, because I do think that many people, even today, think, OK, I want the future to be stable and green and prosperous. But I don’t want to pay $1 more at the pump for a gallon of gas and may actually vote in an election on that basis

That said, reducing the discretionary emissions of the top 1 percent is actually a piece of the decarbonization puzzle. So, if the top 10 percent reduced their carbon emissions do

n to the level of the average European, which is still quite significant — eight tons a year — we would be about one-third of the way to decarbonizing our systems. So we emit as a globe about 30 gigatons of carbon dioxide a year. And this reduction in luxury consumption would reduce emissions by about 10 gigatons a year. So that is just a staggering number.

Most of the people who are listening to this podcast and nobody in this room, for sure, is responsible for causing the climate crisis. But we’re all responsible for now solving it to the best way that we can.

Greenpeace. And here are some social justice organizations — UPROSE and WE ACT. There are also two new organizations who are writing climate policy in a new way and lobbying on the Hill to get them passed. They are Climate Power and Evergreen Action.

While there is a sort of transition bump and we should have public policy that addresses it, especially for communities who are already suffering, it’s also the case that the obvious economic logic is also the obvious environmental logic here. These are no longer in tension.

for me, that answer is really exclusively through a political engagement and political activism because we really need to shake the whole infrastructure of the world. And the only people who are capable of doing that are the people who are in corridors of power in politics and the corporate worl

John Sudworth, BBC News, Beijing: "Why red now?"

The World Health Organization recommends 25 micrograms per cubic metre as the maximum safe level.

the US Embassy's air pollution monitor in Beijing reported that the intensity of the tiny particles known as PM 2.5 was at 291 micrograms per cubic metre.

So why red now? Well, the lack of any previous red alerts has been met with increasingly loud howls of derision. What would it take, people wondered last week - as their children felt their way to the still open schools through the poisonous gloom - for the government to act?

The order will last until 12:00 on Thursday, when a cold front is expected to arrive and clear the smog.

China's air quality is a key factor in its push for a new global deal on climate change.

Around 58% of the increase in the country's primary energy consumption in 2013-14 came from non-fossil fuel sources.

A strong agreement here in Paris won't immediately solve China's air woes, but if it ultimately pushes down the price of renewables even further, it could play a part in solving the issue long term.

While the smog's effects have been worsened by weather conditions and the city's geography - bordered to the south and east by industrial areas that generate pollution and to the north and west by mountains that trap it - it has prompted increasing concern that China has prioritised economic growth at too high an environmental cost.

Activists said the level hit 1,400 micrograms per cubic metre in the north-east city of Shenyang last month, saying it was the worst seen in China.

In comparison, London's PM 2.5 average on 6 December was 8 micrograms per cubic metre, the Environmental Research Group at King's College said. It said more than 70 was reached during spring 2014 and 2015, and the highest was on bonfire night, 5 November 2006, at 112.

China still depends on coal for more than 60% of its power, despite major investment in renewable energy sources.

“Americans don’t really grasp how pollution impacts their lives,” said Drew Shindell, a professor of Earth science at Duke University and the study’s lead author. “You say, ‘My uncle went to the hospital and died of a heart attack.’ You don’t say the heart attack was caused by air pollution, so we don’t know. It’s still a big killer here. It’s much bigger than from people who die from plane crashes or war or terrorism, but we don’t see the link so clearly

The models calculated about 7 million deaths per year if governments fail to work toward zero emissions by the end of the century, starting today.

they “calculated the human health impacts of pollution exposure under each scenario all over the world — but focusing on results in major cities — using well-established epidemiological models based on decades of public health data on air-pollution related deaths,”

Shindell used an automaker’s problem with faulty ignition switches in 2014 to further illustrate his point. When the switches failed, more than 3 million recalls were involved and auto executives were summoned to Washington to testify before Congress. “But the combined tailpipes of automobiles kill dozens and dozens more people than faulty ignition switches,” the researcher said. “We should be far more worried about pollution than the things we actually worry about.

“There’s got to be a significant amount of progress within the 2020s or it’s too late,” Shindell said. Even for the researchers, it’s a pie-in-the-sky goal, given that South Asian nations such as India, where pollution is among the worst in the world, argue correctly that their per-capita use is small compared with historical use in the Western Hemisphere and that they should be allowed time to develop just as other countries did.

“You can hear the person you are talking to, but not see him

A dark, gray cloud that the local weather bureau described as “heavy fog” has shrouded the city of 10 million since Thursday, but the smoke thickened significantly on Sunday,

between 301 and 500 as “hazardous.”

Beijing declared an “airpocalpyse” last January when the U.S. Embassy reported an AQI equivalent of 755, with a PM2.5 concentration of 866 milligrams per cubic meter.

The pollution in Harbin has caused a 30 percent surge in hospital admissions

In the meantime, residents were left comparing the air to something out of a horror film

The red alert -- the highest level in the system -- is due to be in force until noon Thursday local time. The city is currently under an orange alert, the second-highest level.

aims to have its emissions peak by 2030.

Schools were advised to close, but some were choosing to stay open if they felt they had adequate air filtration systems.

sending PM2.5 levels in the suburbs as high as 976 micrograms.

A study led by atmospheric chemist Jos Lelieveld of Germany's Max Planck Institute and published this year in Nature magazine estimated that 1.4 million people each year die prematurely because of pollution in China.

Most of the pollution is blamed on coal-fired power plants

Mr. Biden’s environmental policy proposals include a pledge to “prioritize strategies and technologies that reduce traditional air pollution in disadvantaged communities.

Douglas Buffington, the deputy attorney general of West Virginia, said the rule “represents a big win for West Virginia coal.”

“If they had been tightening it could have been a huge blow to the coal industry,” he said

Already, president-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is planning to move forward quickly in his first months in office to reinstate and strengthen many of the environmental rules rolled back by Mr. Trump

“We’re starting to see evidence that long-term exposure to air pollution — which disproportionately affects communities of color & low-income communities — is linked to COVID-19 death rates.”

Although the E.P.A.’s own staff scientists recommended tightening the current emissions rule, Mr. Wheeler said the scientific evidence was insufficient to merit doing so.

PM 2.5 pollution contributes to tens of thousands of premature deaths annually, and that even a slight tightening of controls on fine soot could save thousands of American lives

“There is a growing body of evidence that it is linked to neurological damage. And there is a growing body of evidence linking exposure of PM 2.5 to elevated levels of increased Covid morbidity.”

“The arguments against this rule are strong,” he said. “Even before that Harvard study there was very strong scientific evidence that stronger controls are merited. The Covid crisis reinforced that, but we didn’t need the Covid crisis to tell us that.”

The new rule retains a standard enacted in 2012, during the Obama administration. That rule limited the pollution of industrial fine soot particles — each about 1/30th the width of a human hair, but associated with heart attacks, strokes and premature deaths — to 12 micrograms per cubic meter

When E.P.A. scientists conducted that mandatory review, many concluded that if the federal government tightened that standard to about nine micrograms per cubic meter, more than 10,000 American lives could be saved a year.

The scientists wrote that if the rule were tightened to nine micrograms per cubic meter, annual deaths would fall by about 27 percent, or 12,150 people a year.

After the publication of that report, numerous industries, including oil and coal companies, automakers and chemical manufacturers, urged the Trump administration to disregard the findings and not tighten the rule

the Great Smog of 1952, pollutants from factories and home fireplaces mixed with air condensation killed at least 4,000 people in London over the course of several days.

However, in 2007, almost half (46 percent) of all Americans resided in counties with unhealthy levels of either ozone or particle pollution, according to the American Lung Association (ALA).

It irritates the respiratory tract and can lead to a number of health problems, including asthma attacks, chest pain and even death.

It causes many other health effects, premature births to serious respiratory disorders, even when the particle levels are very low. It makes asthma worse and causes wheezing, coughing and respiratory irritation in anyone with sensitive airways. It also triggers heart attacks, strokes, irregular heartbeat, and premature death.”

For centuries, humans unknowingly contaminated sources of drinking water with raw sewage, which led to diseases such as cholera and typhoid.

Water pollution intensified with the advent of the Industrial Revolution,

Over half the American population (including the majority of those living in rural areas) relies on groundwater for drinking water, according to The Groundwater Foundation

The disaster, which created a 3,000-square-mile oil slick, instantly killed hundreds of thousands of birds, fish and other wildlife and devastated the area for years afterward.

Some policy experts say it can and should survive, with or without the United States.

US officials "stand completely alone on being climate deniers," Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, told me. "If you look at the speeches from Paris, all the heads of state who came -- all -- and even fossil fuel providers, identified this as a real, science-based issue that they're working to solve together."

Because the Paris Agreement does not levy sanctions or fines against countries that fail to meet their pollution-reduction pledges, it's possible the Trump administration could choose to remain in the agreement while basically polluting as usual.Either tactic -- defection or de facto not caring -- could weaken the pact, potentially leading other nations to defect. The United States, after all, is the second biggest annual climate polluter, after China, and helped negotiate the Paris deal.

By some calculations, we're only five, 10 or perhaps 20-some years away from those red lines if the world keeps polluting at the same staggering rate.

Sterman calculated that the United States pulling out of the Paris Agreement, and canceling many Obama-era climate regulations, including the Clean Power Plan, would increase global temperatures on the order of a few tenths of a degree by 2100. That assumes, however, the rest of the world keeps making aggressive cuts. "Assuming that all nations, including the US, aggressively cut emissions, would yield 1.9 degrees Celsius [of warming] by 2100," he said. "But if the US does nothing, then expected warming rises to 2.2 degrees Celsius by 2100."

Current pledges made as part of the Paris Agreement, including US commitments, put the world at about 3.4 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100, according to Sterman and Climate Interactive. If the entire agreement fell apart and global emissions continued at their current clip, the planet could expect 4.2 degrees of warming.

That could be truly catastrophic. At 6 degrees of warming, for instance, "most of the planetary surface would be functionally uninhabitable," according to Mark Lynas, author of "Six Degrees."

Nearly seven in 10 registered voters in the United States say the country "should participate in the international agreement to curb global warming," according to a November 2016 survey from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.

China’s economy depends heavily on cheap coal-fired electricity, and the country has a history of balking at outside reviews of its industries. China has also been plagued by major corruption cases, particularly among coal companies.

Domestic and external pressures have driven the Chinese government to take firmer action to curb emissions from fossil fuels, especially coal. Growing public anger about the noxious air that often envelops Beijing and many other Chinese cities has prompted the government to introduce restrictions on coal and other sources of smog, with the side benefit of reducing carbon dioxide pollution.

The climate deal will be a substantial, if rare, bright spot in a wide-ranging summit meeting that is expected to be dominated by potential sources of friction between Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi.

The president plans to raise a number of contentious topics on Friday, White House aides said, including cyberattacks on American companies and government agencies, China’s increasingly aggressive reclamation of islands and atolls in disputed areas of the South China Sea, and Mr. Xi’s clampdown on dissidents and lawyers in China.

Under a cap-and-trade system, a concept created by American economists, governments place a cap on the amount of carbon pollution that may be emitted annually. Companies can then buy and sell permits to pollute. Western economists have long backed the idea as a market-driven way to push industry to cleaner forms of energy, by making polluting energy more expensive.

Sets a goal to reduce carbon pollution by at least 3 billion metric tons cumulatively by 2030 – more than half of the annual carbon pollution from the U.S. energy sector

Makes up to $8 billion in loan guarantee authority available for a wide array of advanced fossil energy and efficiency projects to support investments in innovative technologies;

Directs EPA to work closely with states, industry and other stakeholder to establish carbon pollution standards for both new and existing power plants;

expanding and prioritizing forest- and rangeland-restoration efforts to make areas less vulnerable to catastrophic fire;

Commits to expand major new and existing international initiatives, including bilateral initiatives with China, India, and other major emitting countries;

calling for the end of U.S. government support for public financing of new coal-fired powers plants overseas, except for the most efficient coal technology available in the world’s poorest countries, or facilities deploying carbon capture and sequestration technologies;

“And when it comes to climate change, that hour is almost upon us.”

“For I believe, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., that there is such a thing as being too late,”

“We know the truth that many nations have contributed little to climate change but will be the first to feel its most destructive effects,” he said.

Mr. Obama has staked much of his legacy on ensuring success here, spending much of the past year courting the leaders of China, India and other major emitters in hopes they would finally agree to slow their rapidly rising use of coal and other carbon-intensive fuels.

“What greater rejection of those who would tear down our world than marshaling our best efforts to save it,”

They stopped at the site immediately after Mr. Obama landed at Orly Airport and was driven through the quiet and largely blocked-off streets of Paris.

Mr. Hollande arrived at the climate talks at 7:46 a.m. and was greeted by Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who was accompanied by Mr. Hollande’s former partner, the minister of ecology, Ségolène Royal.

Citing climate change as “a huge challenge,” Mr. Xi said it was “very important for China and the United States to be firmly committed to the right direction of building a new model of major country relations,” including by “partnering with each other to help the climate conference deliver its expected targets.”

“As the two largest economies in the world and the two largest carbon-emitters, we have both determined that it is our responsibility to take action,” Mr. Obama said, adding, “And so our leadership on this issue has been absolutely vital, and I appreciate President Xi’s consistent cooperation on this issue.”

The Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a group of business and philanthropy leaders led by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates who have a combined total of $350 billion in private wealth, have pledged to invest in moving clean-energy technologies from laboratories to the marketplace.

“Justice demands that, with what little carbon we can still safely burn, developing countries are allowed to grow,” he wrote in a column published in The Financial Times. “The lifestyles of a few must not crowd out opportunities for the many still on the first steps of the development ladder.

In exchange, India was demanding free technology from other countries as well as significant financial aid. India has some incentives to cooperate with broader plans to curb emissions. Some studies suggest that more Indians could be displaced as a result of rising seas than people from any other country, that cities in India are already among the world’s most polluted, and that nearly a fifth of deaths in India are caused in part by air pollution.

“When you consider how much of our plastic waste isn’t actually recyclable because it is low-value, contaminated or difficult to process, it’s not surprising that a lot of it ends up polluting the environment,”

Americans are using more plastic than ever and the current study included pollution generated by United States exports of plastic waste, while the earlier one did not.

researchers had evaluated waste-disposal practices in countries around the world and used their “best professional judgment” to determine the lowest and highest amounts of plastic waste likely to escape into the environment. They settled on a range of 25 percent to 75 percent.

Of the plastics that go into the United States recycling system, about 9 percent of the country’s total plastic waste, there is no guarantee that they’ll be remade into new consumer goods. New plastic is so inexpensive to manufacture that only certain expensive, high-grade plastics are profitable to recycle within the United States, which is why roughly half of the country’s plastic waste was shipped abroad in 2016, the most recent year for which data is available.

China and many countries in Southeast Asia have stopped accepting plastic waste imports. And lower oil prices have further reduced the market for recycled plastic.

“We’re not going to recycle our way out of this,” Mr. Weiss of ClientEarth said.

Environmental groups also say that recycling has not proved effective at the scale necessary: Only 9 percent of all plastics ever made have been recycled, according to the United Nations, with most of the rest ending up in landfills and dumps.

The company said that it reduced its plastic consumption by 12 percent from 2018 to 2021, and that it has committed to use only reusable, recyclable or compostable plastic packaging by 2025. But Danone is not on track to reach that target, according to a report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which set up a voluntary program with the United Nations for big companies to address plastic pollution.

To sue Danone, the environmental groups have relied on the so-called duty of vigilance law, a groundbreaking piece of legislation that France passed in 2017. It requires large companies to take effective measures to identify and prevent human rights violations and environmental damages throughout their chain of activity.

The French duty of vigilance law, the first of its kind in Europe, has since inspired similar legislation in Germany and the Netherlands, as well as a proposed European Union directive.

There is nothing like a duty of vigilance law in the United States. The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, which would require plastic producers to finance waste and recycling programs, and ban single-use plastic bags and the exporting of plastic waste to developing countries, is currently in committee.

“It’s often about streamlining existing practices,” said Pauline Barraud de Lagerie, a sociologist at University Paris Dauphine who published a book on corporate responsibility. She added that by suing companies, “N.G.O.s are trying to somehow bring back an obligation of result.”So far, around 15 legal cases based on the French law have been reported. Half of them have gone to court and are still awaiting judgment, which could take years.

The lawsuit is part of a wider trend of climate litigation that has gained momentum in recent years, expanding the climate fight beyond traditional demonstrations and civil disobedience initiatives.

The number of climate change lawsuits globally has more than doubled from 2017 to 2022, from about 900 to more than 2,000 ongoing or concluded cases, according to data from the Grantham Research Institute and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.