{"id":2934,"date":"2017-01-06T02:02:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T10:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/?p=2934"},"modified":"2020-02-07T02:25:34","modified_gmt":"2020-02-07T10:25:34","slug":"friday-five-airpocalypse-and-a-fighting-chance-for-elephants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/blog\/2934\/friday-five-airpocalypse-and-a-fighting-chance-for-elephants\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Five: Airpocalypse and a fighting chance for elephants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/01\/05\/world\/asia\/china-renewable-energy-investment.html?_r=4\">China aims to spend at least $360 Billion on renewable energy by 2020<\/a>&nbsp;[NY Times]<\/p>\n\n<p>Details of China\u2019s energy sector 13th five year plan for energy were released yesterday, revealing a huge investment in the country\u2019s already booming renewables industry, creating 13 million jobs. While this is a clear steer towards climate leadership and away from heavy reliance on coal, but the issue of curtailment is still casting a long shadow on the country\u2019s renewables ambitions. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/blogs\/graphicdetail\/2017\/01\/daily-chart-1?fsrc=scn\/tw\/te\/bl\/ed\/\">Why China\u2019s air pollution is on the rise again<\/a>&nbsp;[Economist]<\/p>\n\n<p>China\u2019s air pollution is getting worse again, after two years of almost uninterrupted improvement. The culprit: an uptick in production in China\u2019s steel country. See the graph below:<\/p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/videos\/world\/2017\/01\/02\/timelapse-beijing-smog-sfc-orig.cnn\/video\/playlists\/atv-cnn-digital-exclusives\/\">Timelapse: Smog envelops Beijing in minutes<\/a>&nbsp;[CNN]<\/p>\n\n<p>This frankly terrifying video of an advancing cloud of smog went viral this week as north China suffered under yet another long episode of chart-topping air pollution.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/m.thepaper.cn\/newsDetail_forward_1592180\">Beijing\u2019s PM2.5 levels dropped 9.9% in 2016<\/a>&nbsp;[The Paper]<\/p>\n\n<p>New data from Beijing\u2019s Environmental Protection Bureau showed that Beijing\u2019s PM2.5 levels were almost 10% lower in 2016 than 2015. However this might not be cause for celebration: as we saw above, PM2.5 has been steadily increasing since April while December was the 2nd worst month on record.<\/p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2016\/dec\/30\/china-ban-ivory-trade-2017-elephants-wwf\">China to ban ivory trade by end of 2017<\/a>&nbsp;[Guardian]<\/p>\n\n<p>China has announced a total ban on the sale of ivory which could have massive implications for Africa\u2019s remaining elephants. This is undoubtedly a victory for conservation efforts but it will ring hollow if more isn\u2019t done to clamp down on the bigger and more lucrative&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/archive-international\/en\/news\/Blogs\/makingwaves\/hong-kong-ivory-ban-vaquita-wildlife-trade\/blog\/55363\/\">illegal wildlife trade&nbsp;<\/a>in both the mainland and Hong Kong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>China aims to spend at least $360 Billion on renewable energy by 2020&nbsp;[NY Times] Details of China\u2019s energy sector 13th five year plan for energy were released yesterday, revealing a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":2202,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[22],"p4-page-type":[26],"class_list":["post-2934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-protect-nature","tag-reduce-air-pollution","p4-page-type-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2934"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2936,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2934\/revisions\/2936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2934"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=2934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}