There was a permanent haze, and unique aroma. Now as I watch the F1 race (the track is within 30 miles of where I used to live) I notice how much worse it is now. In the shots of down the front straightaway you can barely see the far end of the track.

We don't need no stinking regulations (if needed)

Though thankfully, the fertility rate has declined to 2.50 (replacement level is something like 2.1 or 2.2 IIRC).

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/india-population/

The dramatic dot video of population growth. A world map beginning in 1 A.D. with 1 dot = 1 million people

http://www.populationconnection.org/site/PageServer?pagename=issues_main

It is about 6 1/2 minutes long but you can skip the first 2 minutes -- the actual dot stuff begins at 2:00 and ends at 5:42. At 5:00 have reached about 1600 A.D. while the population is still quite modest outside of India and China. (So if you are in a time bind, you can start at 5:00 and watch just the last 42 seconds) "As the film neared present day and the dots started flying onto the screen, there were audible gasps, wide staring eyes, and mumblings of "no way" and "I knew we were growing but not THAT much."

Great video. It's crazy to see that India and China already had large populations well before American Colonialism. :O

China and East Asia generally had a very dense population (relative to almost anywhere else in the world) in ancient times because rice cultivation supports a much larger population per acre than other grains. As for India, I never heard an explanation -- but maybe they grew a lot of rice in ancient times too. From this pie chart, India has a lot of rice production too in modern times -- 19.7/28.9 = 68% of the rice production of China (in 2010). With 90% of China's population in 2010. ( 1206 M vs. 1338 M ). So India is not that far from China in per capita rice production.



Lots more where that came from: Google: images rice production india china
For population of China (and India, bonus), Google: population of China
and the top entry is a graph showing both countries plus (another bonus) the U.S.

So bad that the yellow dust from the Gobi Desert blows into the sky (because of deforestation) and picks up the pollutants over China and that travels to Korea and Japan causing health risks in those countries as well.

oligarchs who own coal mines.