This is a very interesting comment. Right now in Canada, we have a Conservative majority government that is absolutely hell-bent on environmental deregulation. Their supporters almost exclusively bring up China as the primary reason why environmental deregulation is so important to them ("if we kept our existing regulations, our economy would tank since China would make so much more money").
I very much doubt seeing the skies in Beijing would change anything, but I wonder. Perhaps a campaign in Canada to show images of what China is like would make a difference; on the other hand, the supporters of the environmental deregulation are not the type of people to care about air quality. They value a "strong economy" and money above absolutely everything else, and think that Canada needs to pollute more and more, as much as it can in fact, in order to be a reasonable country in the future.
Also, people are weird. In the last few decades, there was a huge push to reduce American coal burning plants SOx emissions because of acid rain. It was surprising how much people responded to lakes dying.
that is only true if it is taxpayers who foot the bill for the technology/equipment. If you were a plant operator, you wouldnt want to install expensive air scrubbers to reduce polution, but which won't actually net you any extra profit.
The gov't has to create incentive schemes - otherwise, the rational actor will use the path of least resistance to profit, and i suspect that path won't include pollution reduction measures.
Getting rid of the agricultural price supports in the US would probably help the runoff situation in the Gulf of Mexico, too.
Tell me, what do you think the next step will be after they shutdown?
People need that energy after all - it's not like people will just shrug and go "oh well, no heat for me".
You will actually end up making things worse, under the guise of making things better. Just like a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, an analysis in isolation is worse than useless - it can actually cause you to promote actions that result in the diametric opposite of what you want.
You have good company: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5051285 did the same as you and was rightly skewered for it.
Pollution controls cost money, and some energy. They will only be installed if customers (or customers via the government) demand it.
I pulled the 10% number out of thin air, so I'm kinda curious how you decided that was thermal efficiency.
Who is this "they" that goes for a more complete burn? Power plant operators will go for the cheapest unit that works reasonably.
Average coal power plant in the US has ~32-33% thermal efficiency with plenty in the sub 30% range. The best singe cycle coal power plant has 42% thermal efficiency so saying there is a 10% difference is a good ballpark a for thermal efficiency. X thermal energy times (0.3 + .1) is ~30% more than X thermal energy times 0.3.
PS: I do find it hard to be clear when doing lots of efficiency calculations using %'s.
Small changes in incentives have large effects:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/09/09/129757852/pop-quiz...
Also, the city (an many others) grew a lot since 2008. Lots more traffic, heating, etc.
Not defending the government, but the problem has also grown bigger.