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Surface ozone (O3) pollution, a critical environmental challenge facing government agencies at all levels, is becoming more and more serious in China, especially in rapidly developing urban areas like Beijing. However, in China, few studies have evaluated the contribution of various pollution sources to surface O3, e.g. motor vehicles. In this paper, we combined a non-linear model with an analysis of motor vehicle emissions of NOx and VOCs in an integrated approach to estimate the contribution of motor vehicle emissions to surface O3. The model showed that, in urban areas of Beijing in 2000, the contribution of motor vehicle emissions to surface O3 was 45.9%, and that elimination of 20.0% of motor vehicle emissions will lead to a 7.4% reduction in surface O3, while elimination of 20.0% of NOx or VOC emissions from motor vehicles will result in a 5.0% and 2.5% decline, respectively, in surface O3. In addition, elimination of 10,000 t of NOX from motor vehicles results in the same reduction in surface O3 as elimination of 25,631 t of VOCs. Thus, controlling NOx, emissions from motor vehicles is an effective way to control surface O3 pollution in the study area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the environmental implications of food consumption, from the viewpoint of carbon consumption in Beijing urban households, considering the effects of increasing carbon flux on the environment and alterations in food systems in terms of the carbon cycle. The average food carbon consumption was calculated and analysed in terms of household socioeconomic variables. Several patterns of food carbon consumption with definite socioeconomic characteristics were identified. An average of 279.3 kg food carbon was consumed by households per annum, and was dominated by grain carbon (34.3%). The number of household members, average household age, proportion of male members, education and occupation influence total food carbon consumption of a household. Income influenced consumption of certain foods, thus causing differences in the structure of food carbon consumption. High food carbon consumption patterns tend to emerge in large-size, medium-age, high-male, high-income, medium-education families. Among these, households with a higher age and higher education level have a higher vegetarian carbon dietary pattern, while other households have a higher meat carbon dietary pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since the Earth Summit was launched at Rio de Janeiro, research has been done on the problems of developing indices for the health of the environment and for its sustainable development. However, this research has concentrated more on national and regional levels than on local levels, more on spatial comparisons than on time series analysis, more on short-term than on long-time analysis, more on qualitative than on quantitative analysis. In contrast, therefore, this paper presents an indicator system procedure for measuring Beijing (the capital of China) environmental sustainability based on the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) philosophy, evaluates the trend of Beijing environmental sustainability index (BESI) quantitatively for 21 years, from 1983 to 2003, and suggests three great opportunities in the near future that are expected to provide some dependable information to policy makers. The results suggest that Beijing is still far from environmental sustainable development. The total trend was better in the 1980s than in the 1990s, and has improved slightly since 2000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]