Seminar 01-Why it is so difficult to breathe fresh air?
As a Chinese who used to live in Beijing, I am really eager to talk about the air pollution there, which must be one of the most “wicked” problems I have ever seen in my entire life.
In recent years, people living in Beijing have not been able ignore the phenomena that it has become more and more difficult for them to see a blue sky;as the grey sky sometimes lasts for more than a week. And according to the experts, the grey sky means serious air pollution, and there are some chemical elements contained in the air. Since one of these special chemical ingredient is called pm2.5 is tiny little, once it is inhaled into the lungs, it will be impossible to exhale it. As they build up in the human respiratory system, it will finally cause deadly disease, such as lung cancer.
Thus, without doubt, the air pollution problem has to be solved as quickly as possible, otherwise it will lead to a violation of the general public’s health. Although the government has been trying to implement new rules and policies, the situation hasn’t been ameliorated in the past several years. The reason for this extremely slow progress is that the air pollution is caused by complicated factors, and there are lots of stakeholders and roles involved in. Moreover, attempting to solve this problem will even unleash a chain reaction on other wicked problems which are already incredibly hard to solve.
So far, there are four major factors causing air pollution — factory emissions, heating system, car emissions, and restaurants.
As showed above, to ameliorate the four major factors caused air pollution in Beijing means to solve some other problems first; and on the other hand, the attempt to solve one problem may aggravate other problems. For example, to reduce car emissions, the government enacted a policy forbidding all personal automobiles to go out on the road one day of a working week. Besides that, people can only get the chance to buy a car through a lottery system. These policies did not only cut down personal traffic efficiency, but also aroused the decline of the number of car sales, which made a negative influence on the car industry, commercial sector, and even tourism.
For this air pollution problem, multiple stakeholders are intertwined at the same time. Generally everyone is a victim of air pollution. But during the process of solving the problem, some public services must be regulated or modified, which will harm the general public’s interesting from another angle. Besides public service, there are also some private enterprises which need to pay for the improvement of air quality. Thus, the sacrifice of business owners is inevitable. Consequently, due to the decrease of companies’ profits, the business owner may need to fire some workers thus the unemployment rate would increase. In the meantime, shutting down unqualified restaurants — most of which provide cheap meals — to decrease polluted emissions will indirectly increase the cost of living. Both of which would enhance poverty. For the government, with limited resource, it is nearly impossible to find a perfect solution choosing between economic development and general public’s health.
In sum, air pollution is a wicked problem which could not be solved using a traditional linear design solution. The only way to ameliorate the situation and to find a possible balance point among the complex system asks for advanced design thinking.
