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How does this rate on the wellbeing index? However I think they're doing well on GDP. ... Beijing Smog Makes City 'Barely Suitable' For Life, Report Says

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This is not a very deep article, but the question of how smog feeds into quality of life is important.

I am old enough to remember when the UK had smog that was as bad as this ... especially the killer smog of 1956, which jolted political leadership in England to ban soft coal for English fireplaces. It took time, but Europe has moved from being a very dirty industrial society to something a lot 'cleaner'.

There are a lot of cities around the world that have very serious air pollution ... with automobiles and trucks causing much of the problem. In some place burning wood or charcoal for cooking adds to the problem.

Bottom line, there is a tension between economic activity that improves quality of life and standard of living, and the associated consumption of resources and degradation of the environment. The metrics for this needs to be developed.

When conventional money profit potential is the dominant metric for decision making there is going to be a much worse degradation of the environment than in a world where we make these decisions based on something like our Multi Dimension Impact Accounting (MDIA) which incorporates externalities into the analysis in a manner that is as rigorous as the analysis of money profit.

Specifically, what impact is this Chinese pollution having on the health of the Chinese population and their expectation of life? What is the 'value' ... value destruction ... of a reduction in expectation of life by 1 year? These values are big numbers ... but so also is the improvement in the quality of life achieved by the Chinese as their economy has grown!

At a strategic level, I would argue that Chinese leadership understands that their current level of pollution is a serious problem and something to be addressed. I don't know specifically how much investment they are making in pollution free renewable energy, but I understand it is substantial.

On the other hand, the US and Canada are doing relatively little. In North America the level of carbon emissions is more than 16 tons per capital per year, compared to about 8 for Europe. China is around 5 and India round 1.5. Carbon dioxide is pollution, but it is invisible. What they have in China in Beijing and the other cities is particulate pollution, nitrous oxides, sulphur based pollution, etc all of which is visible.

There is very little evidence that either the population or the leadership in North America is taking their profligate use of fossil fuel based energy seriously ... while being very comfortable lobbing criticism at the Chinese.

Peter Burgess - TrueValueMetrics
Multi Dimension Impact Accounting

Beijing Smog Makes City 'Barely Suitable' For Life, Report Says

BEIJING, CHINA - JANUARY 16: People salute on the Tiananmen Square which is shrouded with heavy smog on January 16, 2014 in Beijing, China. Beijing Municipal Government issued a yellow smog alert on Thursday morning.

SHANGHAI, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Severe pollution in Beijing has made the Chinese capital 'barely suitable' for living, according to an official Chinese report, as the world's second largest economy tries to reduce often hazardous levels of smog caused by decades of rapid growth.

Pollution is a rising concern for China's stability-obsessed leaders, keen to douse potential unrest as affluent city dwellers turn against a growth-at-all-costs economic model that has tainted much of the country's air, water and soil.

The report, by the Beijing-based Social Science Academic Press and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, ranked the Chinese capital second worst out of 40 global cities for its environmental conditions, official media reported on Thursday.

China's smog has brought some Chinese cities to a near standstill, caused flight delays and forced schools to shut.

Beijing was hit by severe levels of pollution at least once every week, according to the 2012 Blue Paper for World Cities report. That was on top of a significant level of air pollution covering the capital for 189 days in 2013, according to city's Environmental Protection Bureau.

Though China's record on pollution is patchy, the government said on Wednesday it would set up a 10 billion yuan ($1.65 billion) fund to fight air pollution, offering rewards for companies that clean up operations.

Overall the government has pledged to spend over 3 trillion yuan ($494.85 billion) to tackle the problem, creating a growing market for companies that can help boost energy efficiency and lower emissions.

Beijing will also shut 300 polluting factories this year and publish a list of industrial projects to be halted or suspended by the end of April, state news agency Xinhua said. ($1 = 6.0624 Chinese yuan) (Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Michael Perry)