China is reaching a point of desperation with their extreme pollution problem. To help get more cars off the roads, the city of Beijing is offering to pay citizens up yo $3600 to give up heavily polluting vehicles — and even give drivers more money to purchase more eco-friendly cars. A recent poll found that 20% of Beijing’s population has considered leaving the country because of the terrible air quality.

China’s environmental protection bureau’s intention is part of a larger plan to get Beijing’s more than 350,000 high-polluting vehicles out of the city during 2009. China’s capital has already banned cars from the roads on one of five weekdays based on their license plate number. This has apparently resulted is a 7% rise in clear sky days in 2008. There are some environmental groups that disagree with this statistic, suggesting that China is fudging the numbers.

This aggressive push would take up to 10 percent of the city’s 3.5-million registered cars off the roads an amount that is thought to account for approximately 50% of the city’s horrendously rising pollution.