Productive? Productivity?

What is being productive? What is Productivity?

I heard this a lot growing up in the 1950s. And then I looked at what smog was doing to Los Angeles that was caused by productivity at that time (just like it is now killing Beijing and other cities too).

In the 1950s the smokestakes of factories and cars in the Los Angeles Basin were killing us all slowly just like the factories of Bejing and other cities in the world are presently killing thousands to millions there too.

In fact I was reading how the Chinese Communist government in China is at present allowing (not criticisms) of the Government regarding air pollution in Beiing but allowing a more constructive discussion which might create a future solution like the one in Los Angeles during the 1960s and 1970s.

What did Los Angeles do? First, we stopped selling leaded gas which was killing a lot of children or retarding them when they breathed the exhaust downtown or near freeways. Because lead burned causes retardation and other health and cancer problems it was found. Then we removed the sulphur from the gas burned which was causing people crying all the time when it reacted to the tears in our eyes, (especially if you had been a child like me swimming in an Olympic sized swimming pool at Verdugo Pool then in the late 1950s). (I was 10 in 1958) in Glendale, California.(The sulphur in the air reacted with the clorine used to sterilize the pools and made it feel like someone was stabbing you in the lungs with a knife each breath after getting out of the swimming pool then)

Then catalytic converters were required on all new cars which changed the air quality a lot. It creates other problems in the air but the air is much clearer now so you can see the mountains around Los Angeles now and the ocean and doesn't usually hurt your eyes anymore.

So, you can now see to drive most days in the summer which wasn't always true in the 1950s and 1960s. You might see about a block ahead some days while your eyes watered trying to see the road to drive the air was just so bad then in the 1950s and 1960s.

Sand storms from the Gobi Desert reach all the way to South Korea in the Spring about now so people in Seoul often wear face masks so they don't get silicosis in their lungs like coal miners or other miners often get when they can't breathe well anymore. The smog of Beijing also often blows to Seoul, Korea and to North Korea as well on it's way across the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle etc.

The U.S. likely in the 1950s was one of the major production polluters just after World War II. After all, we were the ONLY big economy not ravaged by World War II. So, the U.S. profited econmically in supplying a lot of the world including Europe with goods of all kinds until Europe could be rebuilt after the war with Hitler.

So, I guess what I'm saying is it is China's turn to pollute the world now and they are having the same problems we had in Los Angeles and some other cities and also similar to the problems of London in the late 1800s as well.

And likely since China is becoming more and more progressive in it's actions it likely will follow to some degree the model of Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s and after and the model of London in the late 1800s when too many people were getting sick from too much pollution from production.

So, solutions likely will be found one way or the other in Beijing and other cities just like Los Angeles and London and other cities found technological ways to fix their air and water quality with the people's help.

The first step of a solution is allowing the people to think about the problem in order to start to generate potential solutions to the problem. Then the best ideas need to be picked from the general population and inventors to solve the problem whatever it is.