Residents of Chelyabinsk recorded a video message to the President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden, and complained about harmful industrial emissions and air pollution. According to the townspeople, because of this, the number of cancer patients in the city is growing, but officials do not care about this.
“We are in complete despair. Over the past few years, we have been subject to real environmental genocide. As you know, throughout the civilized world there is a clear tendency in favor of a decrease in the share of natural resources and an increase in the share of alternative energy, but in our country this process has been reversed.
From year to year we, residents of Chelyabinsk, suffocate from industrial emissions. The level of air pollution in Chelyabinsk in 2019 was defined as increased. <…> Every year the ecological situation is getting worse, a suffocating toxic smog hangs over the city for weeks, the number of oncological diseases is growing. We are being deprived of our natural right - the right to freely breathe clean air, ”the appeal says.
Chelyabinsk is a large industrial center of the Russian Federation. The city has developed enterprises of metallurgy and mechanical engineering, the aggregate share of which in the total volume of industrial production is more than 60%. Chelyabinsk is one of the largest metal producers in Russia, 43% of all Russian ferroalloys are produced at the city's enterprises.
In 2020, the Chelyabinsk Region was included in the top 10 Russian regions in terms of harmful emissions. Their number is promised to be reduced by 2023.
The authors of the video admitted that this is a gesture of despair. They have already applied to the prosecutor's office, the mayor's office, the regional government, as well as to the waiting room of Father Frost - and received formal replies from everywhere.
Earlier it was reported that in November residents of the Perm village asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel to repair the road.
