Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshadrati. This week, pollution, power, and public data.

As someone living in Europe, everything about China seems big.

It's a big country with a big population with a big carbon footprint.

But it's also a country that, with its state-led capitalism and top-down political order,

has built a big lead in green technologies.

So to talk about China on a climate podcast,

you necessarily have to pick a slice.

And for today's conversation,

we are going to focus on local pollution of air and water.

In a democracy, citizens are free to criticize the government

and call out injustices such as toxic air and

poisoned waters. It's not so easy to do it in China. But that's exactly what my guest today,

Marjun, has built his career doing. His work documenting stunning amounts of air and water pollution

with the help of citizens has made it possible for people to talk about it and even make change happen.

Mahjoon began his career as a reporter for the South China Morning Post in the 1990s.

Travelling the country, he saw the impact that becoming the factory of the world is doing to China's water supply.

Rivers were running dry or running black.

Majun wrote a book called China's Water Crisis chronicling the problem.

It was a wake-up call, garnering comparisons to what Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

did to the environmental movement in the US in the 1960s.

Identifying a problem is one thing.

Ma Jun wanted to do something about it.

...