If you want to see what the TeaPublican future looks like you dont need a crystal ball or Ms. Cleo. No all you have to do is go to that paradise of deregulation - China. China where Mitt Romney finds low wages and low standards and declares paradise. China where 9 year olds get lung cancer without ever having to light up.
An eight-year-old girl, living near a major road in the Jiangsu Province of Eastern China, has become the youngest person in China, and possibly in the world, to be diagnosed with lung cancer caused by pollution—the cause of her disease according to Chinese officials. And last month, the World Health Organization classified air pollution as a major human carcinogen.
Lets note that even the Chinese government admits that pollution was the cause.
We talked with C. Arden Pope, economics professor at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. His research into the effects of air pollution on human health and mortality has been instrumental in establishing federal air quality regulations. He begins by saying that lung cancer in children, all but unheard of worldwide, lands in uncharted research territory.
Just in case the TeaPublicans ever read this, not the researcher is from BYU. Not exactly a bastion of liberal thought.
Q: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s standard is an annual average of 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air, though they allow for daily spikes of up to 35. How does air pollution in industrialized areas of China compare to pollution in some the “dirtiest” American cities?
A: We’re way better than that. Their annual average may be as much as 80 to 100 (micrograms per cubic meter of air) with Beijing sometimes peaking at 800 to 900. In the United States, a couple of decades ago in places like Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, we had places that averaged in the low 30s. The most we get now, even in our most polluted cities, is the low 20s.
So we are talking 3 times what LA used to be in the bad times as a DAILY average. The peaks are 30 times. I went to LA in the 70's when you had to use your headlights at 2PM. I cant imagine what 30 times that is. Oh wait, I dont have to imagine, I can
see it.
And how did LA and Steel Town go from those dangerous levels to "unpretty" levels? Regulation, emissions standards and laws.
You can read the whole story here but the bottom line is this - China is the future TeaPublicans want for the US. Low wages, dirty air, dirty water, destroyed land. All in the name of "freedom." They must be stopped.