| Extensive growth model for our economy and coal-dominated energy consumption structure causes serious coal-burning air pollution. Air pollution brings about great economic losses to human health and the crops, which causes a huge cost of air environmental degradation. How to use quantitative and currency means to assess air environmental degradation cost is meaningful for China which is still in the path of development. The main contents and results of this paper are:(1) According to different understanding of economics and meteorology, air pollution intensity was defined as the air pollutant emission intensity and the air pollutant concentration. In between1997-2011, China’s air pollutant emission intensity had gradually decreased which indicating that the ability of China’s economic and environmental development is gradually increased.The paper analyzed the air pollutant emissions intensity of31provinces by entropy method and then used the result to stand for the level of the cleaner production. We found that Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and other developed areas had low emission intensity, the level of cleaner production was high, and Ningxia, Qinghai, Guizhou and other developing areas had high emission intensity, the level of cleaner production was low which stated that the cleaner production related to the level of economic development.(2)The population number of health effects and the production losses of crop caused by air pollution were estimated by the empirical model of air environmental degradation cost. Select the particulate matter as the pollution factor of human health, using dose-response model to estimate the number of premature deaths, chronic bronchitis patients, internal medicine and pediatric outpatient visits, cardiovascular and respiratory disease hospitalizations cased by air pollution. By selecting rice, wheat, soybeans, cotton and vegetables as the research object, sulfur dioxide and acid rain as air pollution factors, the actual production losses of crop was estimated based on dose-response model.(3) Health cost was estimated by adjusted human capital approach, benefit transfer method and costs of illness, and the crop cost was assessed by the market value method, which can be summed to obtain the air degradation cost. The result shows that, China’s cost of air environmental degradation was as high as1322.52billion yuan in2011, of which the health cost was737.93billion yuan, accounted for55.71%, crop cost was584.60billion yuan, accounted for544.29%. From looks on the whole, the health cost was more than the crop cost. The air environmental degradation cost had a significant correlation basically with the air pollutants emissions and GDP, indicating that the calcalations of health cost, crop cost and air environmental degradation was reasonable.(4)The paper analyzed the air environment degradation cost from different angles. From the vertical perspective, the air environmental degradation costs will tend to drop in recent years, but rise in the long term; through horizontal comparison, we found that different areas had different air environment degradation cost and mean cost, and there were also differences between the provinces in the same area. Among them, the air environment degradation cost and its mean of East china, Central china and North china were very high. Through correlation analysis we found that there is a correlation between the air pollutant emission intensity and air environmental degradation cost. As to compensation policy for air, the compensation mechanism can be built between the superior government and the subordinate government based on air environmental degradation cost, which can promote the improvement of air environmental quality nationwide, then East China, Central China and North China were proposed to implement primarily. |
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