BRIEYA MOORBERG WRITES —The deer in Japan’s famed tourist destination, Nara Park, located in Nara Prefecture, have been dying. This year alone, 1,000 deer died after consuming plastic bags left behind by tourists. Now, to the rescue: A local Japanese entrepreneur, Hidetoshi Matsukawa, a souvenir wholesale agent who has invented…
GREGORY de GERSDORFF WRITES- All life on planet Earth requires water. Given the risks that come with climate change, one would expect all countries to preserve the world’s increasingly dwindling supply of fresh water. This is not the case with Indonesia, but this should come as no surprise. The country has…
JESSICA LEGASPI WRITES–On October 3rd, The Washington Post released an exposé entitled “In Your Phone, in their Air,” on Chinese villagers suffocating on the pollution produced by neighboring graphite plants, resulting in the industry falling under strict scrutiny. The exposé was written by Washington Post writer, Peter Whoriskey, and was…
ANNIE LUNDGREN WRITES- Throngs of urbanites wearing face masks remind the world that Beijing still has not successfully dealt with its pollution problem. Its poor air quality has been under international scrutiny since the 2008 summer Olympics. Smog masks and full-face gas masks made headlines in October when thousands of…
ASIA MEDIA WRITES: On the whole, the international media has reacted to China’s climate improvement agreement with understandable cynicism. Nations tend to talk a lot and do much less. But the agreement recently reached at the 2014 APEC summit in Beijing might prove the beginning of the real deal. People…
AUSTIN SZABO WRITES – A misleading story about Beijing’s virtual sunrise earned more press than Friday’s report naming New Delhi the world’s most polluted big city. The Daily Mail’s inaccurate story claimed that China’s government digitally simulates the sunrise on television screens throughout Beijing since its pollution blocks natural sunlight. Major…
LEXIE TUCKER WRITER – Even as all eyes were on Singapore and the blanket of Sumatran smoke choking the island, mainland China’s State Council was taking steps to help clear that country’s air. According to local media reports, the council approved several specific measures to fight further air pollution, a…
On June 5th, Chinese officials made clear that foreign embassies had better cease publishing their ownreports and estimates on the air quality of China. Beijing has been especially irritated by the increasingly high-profile U.S. Embassy Twitter feed, which tracks pollution in Beijing and has accumulated more than 19,000 followers. Such numbers have garnered much official…
