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On Monday, Chinese netizens saw the streets of Beijing blanketed in the thickest, hazardous smoke the country has seen.
Reuters said Beijing maintained the second-highest "orange" level alert on Monday, forcing major roads, highways, construction to close and people indoors. China's Ministry of Environmental Protection said on Sunday that the worsening smog was caused by "unfavourable weather."
However, social media posts by a slew of journalists could cause an alarm to majority of Beijing's 22.5 million people who will see it online. Slate noted that a couple of these photos showed the city in near-dark, dusk-like state. Pedestrians in the photos were also shown navigating the streets of Beijing in masks to protect themselves from the smog.
Meanwhile, discussions between heads of state and big-named millionaires were conducted at the Paris climate summit since Monday. A major topic as noted by former head of the U.N. climate change secretariat Yvo de Boer was financing climate change policies.
Coordinator Jonathan Coony for the World Bank’s Climate Technology Program said the policies will be implemented as intended to be if the beneficiaries are also the less-developed countries.
“We need to ensure that competitiveness of even less developed countries is enhanced by these opportunities rather than being left behind,” he shared.
