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Comment by Florin_Andrei | Hacker News Reader

Oh, just the city of Beijing. For a moment there, I thought it's the whole country. That would have been... very consequential.

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Well, the city itself is pretty significant on its own. Approx 20 million, ranked as 3rd largest in the world (of course depending on how you enumerate the area/region/or suburbs, subregions, etc.)

It's still pretty significant.

I think the poster below who points to Australia might be referring to the idea that the City of Beijing has approx the same population as the entire country of Australia.

Imagine the effect that would have on Australia.

That comparison seems slightly disingenuous, only for the fact that Australia's size vs population is very disparate. The majority of the area isn't even populated at all -- as in, not even rural sustenance farmers live there. [0] Localized air particulate pollution is very much a matter of local energy generation density, which is going to be closely related to local population density.

[0] http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/1270....

I think borgia is referring to our coal exports to China being lucrative, and their removal would hurt.

We have a lot of coal. Here in Victoria, we have a ridiculous amount of low-grade coal that's not good for exporting. One power company CEO once said in a radio interview that if you want to convince him of a new technique to use less coal for whatever reason, don't frame your argument around fuel price - the coal is effectively free.

Not just the country. All major coal power plants, period.

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