Hangzhou, the 2016 G20 Summit, and Air Pollution around the World HD

Hangzhou is the 13th largest city in China, is the capital of Zhejiang Province, and can be found right here — on the East coast of China. The East coast of China is home to many of China’s most populous and famous cities and Hangzhou is no different. However, despite being a big deal in China itself, Hangzhou is little known about in the West.This will soon change of course. Hangzhou is about to host the G20 summit (which take place from the 4th September 2016 to the 5th September 2016) and so it’s about to be big news. After all, this will be Barrack Obama’s last G20 summit, Teresa May’s first G20 summit, the first G20 summit to take place in South East Asia — let alone China — and Dilma Rousseff has been to step down as leader of Brazil due to bribery scandal right after the Olympic Games and right before this very G20 summit. There’s going to be gossip in Hangzhou and, with all that gossip, it’s quite possible that these world leaders will find themselves ignoring the fact that Hangzhou is one of the most polluted cities in China and therefore the world. They shouldn’t though — because it’s a big fucking problem. Teresa May, especially, should be paying close attention to China’s air pollution problem. Having scrapped the Department for Energy and Climate Change as one of her first acts as Prime Minister, she might want to consider the fact that London too is facing increasing problems with air pollution.So who’s air pollution is worse? London’s or Hangzhou’s. Having lived in Hangzhou for under a year and having a girlfriend who lived in London for two years, it’s abundantly clear that Hangzhou’s pollution is much, much, much worse than London’s or any other English city. Still, don’t take our anecdotal evidence for it. Just look at the data. Why is Hangzhou’s air so much worse than London’s then? Coal. You see, back in the 1950s, London’s air probably was as bad, if not worse, than Hangzhou’s. The reason for this is that the UK was depending on coal for energy. Cue some deals with Middle Eastern oil tycoons, all at varying degrees of dodgy-ness depending on who you ask, and the discovery of oil in the North Sea — a discovery which people died for by the way — and now our air is much cleaner. We burn oil for energy much more than we burn coal and so everything is all good. You know, apart from the fact that oil is a limited resource, contributes to climate change, and creates many, many other environmental problems. Then there’s the fact that air pollution in London is continuing to get worse anyway because of something entirely different. While China and London in the past had to worry about its air being polluted by coal, London’s air is polluted by literally deadly levels of nitrogen dioxide. And when I say deadly, I mean that nearly 9,500 Londoners are dying every year as a result of air pollution, the primary cause of which being nitrogen dioxide. This air pollution is not cause by factories, but by fumes from cars and London’s inc