If you traveled to Shanghai between 1997 and 2001, you undoubtedly noticed a real problem with the air quality around town. I even knew a teacher at the end of his six month contract who asked, “does the fog ever clear?” But the air quality wasn’t as much pollution as it was construction dust, but just the same the city took drastic steps to improve it anyhow they could, and if you’ll pardon the pun, the taxis suffered a real propane in the gas.
The process of taking an entire country from old technology to new technology can be very uncomfortable for the municipal leaders, businesses and individuals as well. To have established a clean air policy for all cars in the city overnight would have meant that basically every car on the road would have to be discarded, a fate we can all agree would be crippling.
The city decided something big needed to happen and it needed to happen immediately, but instead of putting down unrealistic regulations on ALL cars, they instead took double-effective steps on all the cars they could control.
Between 1999 and 2002, all taxis operating in the Shanghai area were converted to run on propane. This was an expensive step in terms of the fuel, the conversion kits and more so the infrastructure to set up fueling stations for tens of thousands of car-hours on the road, but it was a decision they felt they had to make.
Air quality in Shanghai today is better than it has been in many decades, and there’s a few things to credit. One is this conversion of the taxis to propane, the second is the reluctant slowing of the rampant pace of construction (thereby the dust it throws out each day,) but more than that is the local government’s commitment to air quality, pollution control, and the overall comfort and happiness of those who live in the biggest cities.
Pollution has further been curtailed by the introduction of ever more electric powered subways, thus taking fume spewing diesel buses off the streets, and the creation of the hydroelectric dam at Three Gorges to replace coal burning power plants with zero-emission capacity instead. These steps have cost tens of billions of dollars, and they’re only the beginning. If you desire greater air quality, don’t fear that your sentiment goes unheard or that these desires will be deadlocked in committee hearings for decades, but rest assured they are already well underway and the situation is only getting better and better.
