Transcription
Could this be a vision of our future? This is what it's like living in the worst air pollution in the world. Cities growing unchecked, filthy air, the silent effect of climate change. Is this toxic cocktail pushing our civilization to its limits?
It's morning in Ulan Bator, and people are going to work, getting ready to go to school, and I can smell the pollution. It's so thick you can even taste this. I've got a pollution monitor here, and it's measuring PM 2.5, which is these tiny particles that get deep into your lungs. That's why they're so dangerous. And a minute ago, it was at 999, that's as high as this monitor will go. Safe levels are supposedly anything under 25. So how on earth did it get this bad?
To figure that out, we've come here to the pristine air of the Mongolian steppe and a very different way of life. Oh, add 30 genes in an air combine and his brother should be the next in a long line of nomadic herders.
Despite their clear mastery of animal handling, they may not have a chance. It's getting harder and harder to live out here. How far ahead Marshall hora de Guzman Farah ma he woulda had disease or heart?
This year, there's no snow. Last year, it was the opposite. She noticed nothing new. My sorrow, yet they lost all of their horses, 20 of them, and over 30 sheep. The reason why life is getting so difficult for herders here on the steppe, it's because the weather has been really messed up over the past few years. They had two really dry summers, followed by extremely cold winters. So animals didn't eat enough during the summer to last them, and they were weak and couldn't survive the winter.
But this year has been completely different. The summer was really wet, there was a lot of flooding, and that winter has been incredibly dry. This grassland should be completely covered in snow, and the snow actually protects the grass. Right now, these animals are just chewing up everything they can, and people are worried that by the time spring comes, all the grass will be gone. And that's because the climate here is changing in weird and unpredictable ways.
Do you think you'll be able to stay here in the countryside? You know, it would really and they would resume Weston was the hand of put. I wasn't here. It is our German month wants to find work as a chef in the city, along with tens of thousands of others who are leaving the countryside every year.
Climate scientists say Mongolia has already warmed by 2.2 degrees. The fact that it's landlocked and it's high altitude mean it's much more vulnerable to temperature changes. Half the population of Mongolia now live here in the capital, and most of them are burning raw coal. It's the cheapest way to keep warm when temperatures get as low as minus 25. But it's choking the city and hurting its smallest residents. Kidney is only 5 months old, but he's already been hospitalized six times. You didn't do it in this blue down cambrian. Dr. Madsen, good to see you. Jim, I thought nobody hoped and you can be no good for that, but our Confessor, I think it touched him. Oh, Masha, Masha. And I mean, you're outside the hospital. PM 2.5 levels are off the scale again.
Every day here, doctors see hundreds of children who are struggling to breathe. Dr. Gant chill and zoondy has no doubt that it's linked to the pollution. From having eaten her son, Jack Bartlett was not in fact a parent of limited hearing many times in the hospital. If the chief to chop an audit report enter digital imaging, it must be difficult when you help with a child to get better, and then you know that they're going back into the pollution to get sick again. Thomas gonna help each Sorata he who out another to Samara, don't want to manage that homework tearing it between between diverting it after ingestion and getting sit in a car attached who stood mended handing it off to John ditch. Mr. Danish, her biggest fear is that in the long term, toxic air could lead to an epidemic of lung disease.
The city has ambitious plans to ban raw coal. They want to force people to use cleaner processed coal, but processed coal is expensive. Is it uh, it's all so it's dropping right? Wow, it's going down fast. Hmm. It's surprising how little is being done to stop air pollution in a Lambert are. But one startup is working to make air filters more affordable. So if it's leave it on for like 20 minutes, then this room won't be cleaner. Wow. Not enough people have these, right? Yeah, actually, most air purifiers cost a lot, so people can't drill afford it. And also education purpose, they don't know how bad it is. Just assume I know that I miss my box. It still, it's just a plaster on a gaping wound.
This is extreme, almost apocalyptic. But the problems Ulaanbataar is facing are being repeated all over the world. And unless we get a handle on the types of fuel we use, rapid urbanization, and climate change, this kind of pollution could become the disturbing.