![[Valid Atom 1.0]](valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
FUEL SHORTAGE * China - Trucks Power China’s Economy, at a Suffocating Cost
Guangzhou,China -Chinh's news (La Plaine Saint-Denis, Ile-de-France, France), by KEITH BRADSHER -December 28, 2007: -- ... Trucks are the mules of this country’s spectacularly expanding economy — ubiquitous and essential, yet highly noxious... Trucks here burn diesel fuel contaminated with more than 130 times the pollution-causing sulfur that the United States allows in most diesel. While car sales in China are now growing even faster than truck sales, trucks are by far the largest source of street-level pollution... Tiny particles of sulfur-laden soot penetrate deep into residents’ lungs, interfering with the absorption of oxygen. Nitrogen oxides from truck exhaust, which build all night because cities limit truck traffic by day, bind each morning with gasoline fumes from China’s growing car fleet to form dense smog that inflames lungs and can cause severe coughing and asthma... The 10 million trucks on Chinese roads, more than a quarter of all vehicles in this country, are a major reason that China accounts for half the world’s annual increase in oil consumption. Sating their thirst helped push the price of oil to nearly $100 a barrel this year, before a recent decline, and has propelled China past the United States as the world’s largest emitter of global-warming gases... Low diesel prices frequently make trucks more cost-effective than trains, which pollute less. Sales of large freight trucks in China outpace those in the United States by a wide margin... Demand for diesel at service stations is so great, and supplies are so tight, that rationing and shortages have become common. Truck drivers idle for hours only to be allowed to buy as little as five gallons of fuel... Since 2000, sales of heavy-duty trucks have risen sixfold while car sales have risen eightfold. This has created myriad problems, from gridlock that chokes China’s cities to pollution that chokes its citizens, contributing each year to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths from heart and lung problems, according to the World Bank... (Spewing Soot While Waiting for Fuel -- Trucks often spend hours idling in fuel lines, like these in Wuhan, sometimes for as little as five gallons of diesel, because of shortages and rationing.)Labels: fuel shortage
posted by Unknown @ 5:03 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home