Michael Greenstone, writing for the New York Times:
This pollution shortens lives and, in the process, undermines the economic growth emerging economies urgently need, as I and other researchers concluded in a recent study. Comparing China’s pollution in the north — where it’s worse, because of subsidies for coal heating in the winter — with the south, we found the north experienced reductions in life spans of about five years. That means people living in northern China are losing many billions of years of life expectancy because of heavy pollution. Keep in mind that southern China also has high pollution levels, which very likely reduces life spans there, too.
Crazy!