China: Does Cleaner Air Mean More Global Warming? | Newsweek Coverage of the Olympic Games

PLANET EARTH
Is Healthy Air Bad?
Jamie Reno 8/23/2008 12:00:00 AM
Dissidents aren't the only ones being forced off Beijing's streets during the Olympics. The Chinese government has also pushed drivers off the roads—about 3.5 million of them—and shuttered hundreds of factories, steel mills and coal plants in an effort to reduce the city's notorious smog. But while better air in Beijing may be good news for athletes, it could for worse for the earth's environment. "When you clean up very polluted air, as China is doing during these Olympics, it has a direct impact on global warming," says Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a leading climate researcher from the University of California, San Diego, who is studying Beijing's atmosphere for the Games' duration.
SPECIAL REPORT: THE EDUCATION RACE
The West Need Not Panic
8/9/2008 12:00:00 AM
Rapid growth in Asia and the Middle East has led many to conclude that U.S. economic hegemony is ending. Now one might ask if the same is happening to U.S. academic hegemony, as these regions make impressive investments in higher education.
Can China Rule the Olympics?
Daniel Gross 8/8/2008 12:00:00 AM
The economic story of the past several years has been China's massive growth as it has nabbed market share in important international competition and assumed a higher profile on the global stage. Nothing exemplifies China's rise more than its hosting the 2008 Olympics. Could it put an exclamation point on its upward trajectory by dominating the Games?
Who’ll Stop the Rain?
Sharon Begley 7/26/2008 12:00:00 AM
Close pollution-belching factories around Beijing? Check. Restrict cars and trucks? Oh, yes. Send hookers, beggars, vagrants and street hawkers packing? Done. Wring rain from clouds before they float over Beijing National Stadium (a.k.a. the "bird's nest"), site of the opening and closing ceremonies, as Beijing announced in January it would do? Let's just say that rocket launchers, antiaircraft guns and a veritable armada of small planes stand ready. Too bad that no project in the 60-year history of weather modification has managed to reliably bring about or suppress rain on demand. And that goes for the old Soviet claim that Russian science ensured sunny skies for every May Day parade.
BUSINESS
Bad Chemistry
Jonathan Ansfield 6/29/2008 12:00:00 AM
State planning used to be a slam-dunk. No more. In the past year grassroots protesters in China have forced the delay or suspension of at least a half-dozen big centrally-backed projects. Their fears of toxic fallout are magnified by mistrust of a system lacking public oversight.
CHINA EARTHQUAKE
Animal Instinct
Melinda Liu 5/21/2008 12:00:00 AM
The news from here in the heart of China's earthquake zone remains heartbreakingly grim. Miraculous tales of survivors pulled alive after days under rubble are dwindling; the death toll is soaring. Amid all the tragedy and devastation, though, there is some less dire news from the quake zone: China's "celebrity pandas" survived the quake, according to Chinese volunteers who visited the famous Wolong Nature Reserve just 18 miles from the epicenter.