(Most of) The World Cares Deeply About China's Declining Air Quality
Those of us who listen to Al Jezeera can’t help notice that the deplorable quality of the air in China is a really big deal, not only to the Chinese, but to people all around the globe. In addition to long-term environmental damage, the proliferation of coal-fired power plants has created immediate and dire health consequences for hundreds of millions of people, hoards of whom are flocking to stores to buy air purifiers and face-masks.
Thoughtful and compassionate people all over the world understand that we’ve come to a fork in the road. We either cooperate with one another and come together to develop sustainable solutions to our planet’s energy-related problems, or we’re all in for a world of hurt.
Of course, those who get their news from the mainstream media in the U.S. could easily miss this issue altogether, as it’s being largely ignored over here.
It may be that our news media would cover such things better if we wrote to them and stated that we’ve stopped watching commercial television because of its failure to cover import matters. PBS, NPR, Al Jezeera, and a few other sources cover things that our commercial media ignore.
I’ve even shut off the TV after becoming tired of watching commercial after commercial after commercial. I realize that it is commercials that pay for the service, but surely it is unreasonable to devote excessive time to commercials. Also, too much of the news is trivial and even when it is not trivial, time is often misallocated. For example, when a road accident occurs, it would be more constructive to show exactly how the accident occurred and what could have been done to avoid it rather than interviewing crying relatives who would probably prefer to be left alone. It would make more sense to delay reporting accidents until that information becomes available thereby giving us an opportunity to learn from the accident and improve our own driving.