Beijing, Pollution, Olympics - and Thought Control

Unfortunately for the 2008 Olympic Games, the industrial revolution in China is going on now - and according to the Associated Press, the Central Committee that rules China with an iron fist is closing all of the factories in the region in an effort to improve the air quality, at least temporarily, so the Olympic athletes can actually compete. Beijing today resembles London of the mid-19^th century, with air pollution so thick that the sky turns gray, and in order to breathe while just walking down the street, residents are forced to resort to a filter of some type covering their faces.

Why was the air in London so noxious in the middle of the 19^th Century, and toxic in the 21^st Century in Beijing? Coal.

Coal has been used for about 10,000 years as an energy source, and perhaps not surprisingly the earliest recorded use was in China. However, with the Industrial Revolution that swept through England beginning in the mid-18^th Century, the need for reliable power supplies in London and other British cities led to the "smokestack" industries for iron refining. Once steam engines became safe for widespread use with the advent of new steel manufacturing techniques, coal was the king became the worldwide king of energy supplies - and would continue to hold that spot but for the toxic chemicals that come spewing from burning it.

At the end of the 19^th Century, electrical generation came on the scene, and coal-burning power stations scattered within cities became virtually extinct within industrialized nations - but coal was still being burned in ever more tonnage, only isolated from the population centers as distribution networks became more interlocked and reliable