That's a good question. I'm not sure at this point if you could deploy enough of them to make a dent.
Even if you could magically ban all polluting industry tomorrow unless scrubbers were installed within 30 days and all cars were burning natgas I don't know if it would be enough. At some point real soon I imagine water is going to start reaching toxic levels from rain pulling all the toxins out of the sky. And then ecosystems starting to collapse.
Arsenic is an element, you can eat it, but it's still there, just inside the bacteria.
However different compounds of arsenic have different toxicity - elemental arsenic is most toxic, organic arsenic less so, so perhaps that's what they do - convert it to a less toxic form.
Interestingly mercury is the opposite - elemental mercury isn't very toxic (because it's a metal and just doesn't absorb, it just stays as a clump of metal). But organic mercury is very toxic because the organic part makes it available to interfere with biological processes.
> water is going to start reaching toxic levels from rain pulling all the toxins out of the sky
Nah, that stuff in the sky is mostly carbon (from burning straw, and other low temperature fires) which is not toxic to drink (in fact at low levels it makes water taste sweet) and perhaps some random hydrocarbons which would rapidly decompose.
The worse stuff is various nitrogen compounds (acid rain), but even those don't accumulate in water. Those are made in engines, not from regular fires.
Drinking and breathing have very different profiles for what is toxic.
Outdoors: prevention. Eliminating major pollution sources is what matters most. A good rain helps.
India's major population centers face a similar problem to Los Angeles: they're backed by a major mountain range (the Himalaya) which tends to bottle-up pollution. The second problem is that there are are roughly 30x the people living in that area (~500 million vs. ~15 million for LA).
Indoors: it depends on the specific threats you're looking to eliminate. Generally these include:
1. Particulates. A HEPA or electrostatic filter should help.
2. Ozone: Houseplants.
3. Other contaminants, including sulfer oxides and nitrogen oxides: possibly activated charcoal or zeolite.
My wife is from noida, a suburb of Delhi. Her mother, brother and other family live there in the NCR area.
We talked to her mom two days ago and she says it's so bad now she can't even see the road when she goes out in an auto.
Her brothers latest post to Facebook is "feeling suffocated! Have to get out of this city!"
When I was there two years ago, my first time in India, I had no idea what to expect. The second the plane landed and we were pulling up to the gate my very first comment was "Do you smell something burning?" To my wife.
The second I got into the concourse I knew what it was. The airport was filled with smog. It was a little shocking.
The fact that it's gotten so much worse that two years later you can't even see the road is mind blowing.
I thought kejriwals plan for limiting the roads to odd plate numbers one day then even the next was a good idea to help cut the pollution.
The problem was apparently the people, just like here, hated it because it was his plan and not modi's, plus the people never would have followed it because well the saying cutting your nose off to spite your face is appropriate here. The people won't tolerate that inconvenience even though they are literally killing themselves.
The wife's mother retires in august. She has two months of vacation built up. We told her to simply take the two months come June and move here to the states.
China has bad pollution problems to deal with too. But man looking at India you can see an absolute failure of government to serve the people.
There are too many people in their cities. Delhi is a mess. Bangalore as well.
I don't know exactly what indias energy supplies look like but they are certainly past a redline where petrol burning vehicles should be banned. Things moved over to natgas or major mass transit infrastructure should have been the primary focus decades ago.
I can see how it hasn't been though with the astonishing level of corruption and nationalism preventing foreign companies from coming in and investing and solving some of their problems.
It's so sad. I loved the country. It's beautiful. With such character, potential, and such life! But it's just become such a cesspool. Homelessness, corruption, rapes, pollution, human trafficking, poverty.
Law enforcement is a joke and couldn't enforce anything in that country.
If you get hit by a car and it's a life threatening injury, say your prayers because you are dead. Help will never reach you in time. There are no traffic laws, none that anyone there follows, no one moves for emergency vehicles, it's dog eat dog. Brutal.
It's almost my definition of a failed state. I think the good nature of the people is the only thing keeping it from the giant flush of collapsing civilization.
India definitely has its problems, no doubt about it. But to say it is a failed state is overstating it. Libya is a failed state. Broken apart, no government with capability to rule and brewing civil war. India is not like that.
The government doesn't really rule in India. It's a circus show.
They can't solve the rape problems, poverty, crime, pollution. They lack any power to enforce any laws on the people when the cops are constantly on the take for bribes, no one trusts the police, you're laughed at by the police when filing a report or they refuse to take the report.
Again I'm not sure that anything is keeping the country afloat other than the good nature of the people to simply survive.
Please, tell me how you can make a claim that "it's an order of magnitude worse".
I grew up in India. I had a decent number of Indian women as friends, who were close enough that they'd tell me very personal details. Not one of them ever mentioned being assaulted to me.
I then moved to the US. And about 1 in 5 women I've come to know have told me that they were assaulted. This ties in well with the official statistics[1], which works to roughly 500,000 women being raped per year.
On the other side, here's a news article claiming that ~34,000 women were raped in India in 2015 [2]. In a country with ~500 million women, that's a pretty small number (with the caveat that even 1 rape is 1 too many, in my view).
So please, enlighten us with where you got your "order of magnitude more" number from.
It's an order of magnitude worse because we don't have "indias daughter" types of barbaric savage animalistic rapes/torture/murders occurring almost with shocking frequency.
The level of barbarism inflicted on women in India during acts of rape is chilling. Like Isis levels of savagery.
That's how it's an order of magnitude worse.
And rarely is anyone charged let alone convicted for such brutality.
The difference is that an investigation is conducted when it's reported in the U.S. If a perpetrator is identified then charges are brought against them. That provides a strong incentive for sane people not to commit rape, which doesn't really exist in India.
Yeah. I just don't see the rape "epidemic" at a personal level here in India. It's not even a valid claim at a statistical level. Just go to Rishikesh, or Rajasthan and you'll find a large number of tourists that are solo-female travelers from abroad.
As for police investigation the state I live in is quite strict. So much so that even a mere accusation can get you thrown into jail and ruin your life. So charges are brought against the perpetrators, and the judicial system is continuously improving. To say that "it doesn't exist" is a blatant hyperbole that honestly I believe reeks of malicious intent.
As characterizing India's situation as special, or extraordinary in comparison to any first-world country is extremely dishonest. So while Rape is most definitely a problem, and the judicial system in India is especially lacking, the criminality is not.
Yes America does have horrifying rape stories that continue to happen on a daily basis this includes gang rapes, serial killings, rapes, and forced sexual slavery. It's naive to believe that those aren't issues in America, just look at the prostitution gangs that spring up during the Super-Bowl. Look at the Toy Box serial killer. That just wasn't one guy. That was an entire gang that predatorily kidnapped women and tortured them for months on end.
There are many other cases out there, but they don't get the same voice in the media.
It's amusing how instead of admitting there's a problem and moving on, you start distracting people by pointing a finger and saying "see, it's worse there!".
That doesn't help anything. Both things aren't problems, you bringing up another country's problems doesn't make your country look better.
It's like saying "Our country has illegal loan sharking? Well, your country has immoral bankers, so there!". Just muddying the waters is what you're doing.
No. I never said that there's no problem. Rape is a problem. But what I'm against is trying to spin it as something of an extraordinary problem, or making India into some special case.
Really? In western countries, rape, molestation and catcalling is generally frowned upon.
You have a term for it - "eve teasing".
Also, you guys tend to have a big slant towards victim shaming - no decent woman will get raped. This is generally in the countryside.
In the big cities, many countries have issued travel advisories because of rape to avoid India for female travelers.
So yes, there is a qualitative difference between Indian rape and western rape. Don't muddy the waters with other matters of sexual misconduct. We're talking about India here.
I'm currently traveling to India from the states, and this is exactly why I'm against trying to characterize India as a "special" extraordinary case. You're just proving my point as to why building this kind of narrative is dangerous.
Even the majority of mythologies, and social perceptions don't victim blame in the case of rape so I don't know where this "no decent woman will get raped" is coming from. However I will admit that there's still a perception that going out at night is dangerous which, even as a guy, I subscribe to for the most part. It is nullified if I'm going with others, and depending on the area. Unfortunately there's still a social stigma associated to the rape victim, which is changing.
"So yes, there is a qualitative difference between Indian rape and western rape."
What a load of bullocks. There's a "qualitative difference" between the crimes of all countries as all crimes are dependent on their specific geographies, culture, and people, which all invariably change. This is the case even in the USA.
"In the big cities, many countries have issued travel advisories because of rape to avoid India for female travelers."
Based on what? One anecdotal case? Or based on what statistic? Or is it just manufactured? I mean what proof do you have to actually make it a valid claim?
> There's a "qualitative difference" between the crimes of all countries as all crimes are dependent on their specific geographies, culture, and people, which all invariably change.
That's a specious argument. There are differences between crimes of all cultures, and there are similarities. One huge difference is that rape videos are widely distributed and sold in India, without much social condemnation. That indicates a level of acceptance and social integration not present in most other countries. http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/asia/2016/10/al-jazeera-purch...
The travel advisories are out there. Not just rape, but lewd acts and molestations. Are these travel advisories well founded? Maybe, maybe not. But the fact is that they exist.
India's average education attainment is worse than that of Libya and even contemporary Iraq; unlike most countries there exist no path for prosperity via education for the majority of Indians, since it is a de-facto linguistic apartheid state.
Its per-capita incomes too are lower than Libya, and on comparable terms with Iraq and Syria. This, achieved, in about 70 years of peace, without colonial blood-sucking.
By every definition, India is a failed state.
Some will try to wriggle away from this by claiming, education is not important, or that money is not important, or by pointing to the outsourcing businesses (which I hear are smaller than the Yoga industry in the US), but these are parochial status-quoists, or silly romantics. There far too many of the latter.
The rape issue is complicated - the incidents are indeed ISIS like barbarity, from a civilization that has historically valued women (before the Islamic and Victorian invaders, and their now celebrated cruelty).
The stats might show indeed that the numbers are smaller per-capita than developed nations (even after accounting for under-reporting), but for some reason those who commit rape tend to be extremely sadistic and cruel.
Ok, sorry. Libya was a poor choice (my poor research). Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen. Take your pick. [1] Maybe it is better to talk about a region of India rather than India as whole? As there is such variance.
60 years ago, John Galbraith, the economist and Ambassador to India, called India a "functional anarchy". He meant that the country survived despite the government, and not because of it.
It has survived 60 years since Galbraith's keen observation. It will continue to do so.
That's not surprising considering that India has always been de-centralized "anarchy"; which folk like Marx and his modern re-incarnations would dub "primitive".
Considering that Delhi's smog is due to crop-fires and not due to cars, Kejri's plan was little more than a PR stunt (there were no studies to support his policies).
I just got back from Delhi. I started coughing as soon as I landed in the airport 4 days ago. The air is almost unbreatheable.
However, the working-class people I've come across don't seem to be worried about it from a health perspective (or they don't show it off). Infact my friend's wedding had a lot of crackers. Life as usual for them.
In 1995 I went to downtown LA. The air looked like your picture of the Red Fort. In LA at the time I could not see more than 2/3 of a mile. The air burned the back of my throath when breathing.
> It took decades. Los Angeles had its first real smog attack during World War II, a smog strong enough that some people suspected a Japanese chemical attack. But it wasn’t until 1975 that the U.S. required new cars to have catalytic converters, “the key piece of technology that allowed everything to change,” according to Mary Nichols, chairman of California’s Air Resources Board.
Were 'catalytic converters' technology a known solution at the time? I wonder if there is a known solution to the smog problem faced by Indian and Chinese cities. Or is the solution yet to be discovered.
It feels like (after having lived there) these cities have crossed the threshold for number of people/cars/houses/offices per unit area and the way forward is to force expansion of cities -
- reduce number of high rises that can be built
- reduce number of cars that can be produced or sold
- force/incentivize offices and industries to move out of these big cities
- large, safe and economical state owned public transport
The solution was actually legislation and regulation of the auto industry. The legislature in California and (to some extent) the US realized that particulate pollution and smog were major problems in cities, so they passed laws requiring automakers to install equipment that controls emissions. The OBD and OBD II systems, electronic fuel injection, the catalytic converter, and various other systems are a result of that legislative push.
If they had left it up to the individual, as India has, we would experience similar air quality.
I should add that California has tighter emissions standards than the federal government, and some vehicles will be sold with special emissions control equipment in California. For example, I had a GMC C1500 truck, which shipped with an optional Air Injection Reactor if you bought it in California.
Some of it is money. Installiing California emission equipment to all vehicles would cut pollution a lot... But if it raised vehicle cost by 50%, no one could afford it. I think we know how to fix it, but no one wants to start taking cars away from people or raising the prices 50%.
I attended elementary school in California in the late 70s/early 80s. We would have smog alerts when the air quality was so bad we couldn't go outside during recess.
California has been working on this since the late 60s. They were the first state to require better emissions controls on cars, they have tightened regulations on businesses and industries that would normally negatively contribute, and the push the problems of dirty power generation into other states.
And it's full of vacuous entertainment industry people and their hangers-on. Nobody knows how to read books. Only advantage is being able to turn right on red. Sammy Glick, Day of the Locust, Helter Skelter, gag me with a spoon, Arnold Schwarzenegger, earthquakes, wildfires, riots. Bad food. Best to stay far away.
It's an uphill battle. There are more hybrid vehicles on the road these days and California has pretty stringent emissions requirements, the Dept. of Motor Vehicles requires you to have a smog check every two years on your car. However the population of L.A has been booming for over a decade now and despite investment in mass transit it hasn't put much any appreciable dent in automobile traffic.
Current PM 2.5 level in LA is 74. Current level in Delhi is 500+. The scale is just not comparable. I lived in LA for 3+ years in the 2000s. I just returned to Delhi and the air quality is way, way worse than I have ever experienced, anywhere.
> In 1995 I went to downtown LA. The air looked like your picture of the Red Fort. In LA at the time I could not see more than 2/3 of a mile.
Delhi and LA have similar problems in that they are both at the foothills of a mountain range (in Delhi it's the Aravali mountains). This makes it much more difficult for the pollution to dissipate once it's there, because the mountains obstruct wind and airflow. LA has been making efforts for decades to reduce emissions, but the payoff has been incredibly slow for this reason.
Of course, Delhi is a much larger and densely populated city - the Delhi metro area has almost the same population as the entire state of Texas - and it's also nowhere near as wealthy as LA. All three of those factors make it much harder to address pollution directly and much slower for the benefits to actually start manifesting.
"As per provisional reports of Census India, population of Delhi in 2011 is 11,034,555; of which male and female are 5,882,117 and 5,152,438 respectively. Although Delhi city has population of 11,034,555; its urban / metropolitan population is 16,349,831 of which 8,750,834 are males and 7,598,997 are females."
That is not 22 million or 25 million, it is 16.3 million!
The population of Texas is an order of magnitude more in population. So yeah the OP was wrong.
Please substantiate your claim of otherwise with actual data.
1) "Metro area" usually refers to city and nearby suburbs, and
2) "It is the most expansive city in India—about 1,484 square kilometres (573 sq mi). It has a population of about 25 million, making it the second most populous city after Mumbai and most populous urban agglomeration in India and 3rd largest urban area[7] in the world"
Why is it that when people cite a link to support their point, they can't even manage to read it properly?
Your link says 21.8 millions for Delhi metro (as your quote specifies it). A figure that is dated from 2011. At that time, according to your other link, Texas was somewhere around 25.6 millions.
So, Delhi metro population was about 85% of Texas. Given the comparative growths, this percentage has probably raised a bit during the last 5 years. Overall "almost" looks to me as a correct approximation.
The latter is how I remember it at dusk two years ago ween I visited it. Wow.
I hope you enjoyed the place as much as I did even with the pollution!
I think most there don't really understand the health hazard or how bad it is for them because it's all they know. Put them in Kansas City for a week and send them back and I promise you'll see some people freaking out heh.
In comparison, I took the pic at 4pm :( Not dusk yet.
In my poor design vocabulary, I pointed out at the Sun, and joked to my designer friends that one of them put a vector mask on the Sun.
I couldn't go around much after the friend's wedding. I wanted to do a 6am jog at Rajpath and India Gate. But a friend joked that it was pointless to look at "India Gate as a silhouette". At about 1pm when going to Humayun's tomb, I passed by Rajpath and realized it wasn't a joke. I was scared to venture out anymore after a day of roaming. I hope to visit again sometime.
>> I think most there don't really understand the health hazard or how bad it is for them because it's all they know.
Its not just that. Even if people are aware of health hazards, they think they can make exceptions for themselves because one person isn't gonna make things worse.
I lived first half of my life in relatively cleaner Himalayan regions, and when I moved to Delhi, I was almost always sneezing. I already was miserable living there, and now its worse. :(
Many of my Indian friends are posting their air-quality readings on Facebook as a sort of macabre competition. The rest of the year isn't nearly this bad, and conditions have gotten much worse in recent years. I think many Indians are well-aware of the problem.
But by the same token, residents of Los Angeles don't sit around and worry about their air quality either and it's not like they don't know anything else, the city has no shortage of transplants.
In fact most of South Asian cities are in same dire state.
I was in Kathmandu in April and you can hardly breathe not because of smoke but mostly because of dust (as construction for road and water supply is going for a while.)
I lived in India and been to Mumbai many times. Man, the whole city stinks.
It's not surprising that China, India and other developing countries are going through the same pains "the West" experienced up to 20 years ago - which stopped right about the time we outsourced our most polluting industries to... China, India and other developing countries.
What is interesting is watching how they try to fix it. There was much noise about pollution during the Beijing Olympics - how is the situation there, right now? Can it be a model for Delhi? Will these countries have to walk the same path we did, or will technology let their manufacturing capabilities survive?
Beijing's solution for the Olympics was to shut off the offending factories for the duration, and take other similar temporary measures. Once they were over it was back to usual, and has been getting steadily worse ever since. I've visited every two years or so since the early 2000s and it has become amazingly bad. On bad days, it's highly unpleasant to be outside. We'd plan different activities based on it, like you might plan around rain in a more sane place.
The government has tried various half-hearted measures to fight the problem. For example, cars are banned from the roads on certain days based on their license plate numbers. Of course, many Chinese people who can afford a car can afford two, so it's fairly easily worked around. Cars aren't the major cause of the problem anyway, so it's a bit pointless. The people don't seem to care all that much, so there isn't much motivation to fix it.
I really hope they can figure it out, but for right now, Beijing's handling of pollution isn't a good model for anybody.
I'm saying that 'environmental consciousness' as a civic issue started in London in the early 19th century, not '20 years ago'.
By the time pollution was bad from the plastic-chemical revolutions of the 1960's there was already a conscientiousness very well developed.
One major difference: the pollution from coal in the industrial age was visible. From the 1950's chemical revolution - it was not. And so it wasn't evident to the average person that the pollution was 'hurting'. Much like smoking - it takes some science etc. to show it's bad.
Mate, I live in Stockport, ye? I've seen pictures from the '90s and they weren't pretty. The River Mersey was flowing red, and was literally an open-air dump. With all the effort that's gone into cleaning it up since, the real difference has been that industry around here mostly shut down because it's now cheaper to do the shitty stuff elsewhere. What's left is between Warrington and Birkinhead, and doesn't the air look shit on that side all the time, pollution checks be damned. There are old chemical companies based here that nowadays manufacture and sell only outside the EU, because Euro regulations are too stringent for them (everyone's guess, of course, is that all this "red tape" will disappear in the glorious brexit, relaunching UK manufacturing and likely painting rivers red again). These people care very little for rates of cancer and all that noise, and there is simply no way to make what they make "cleanly".
England in the 80s was a polluted clusterfuck as much as anywhere, maybe not as lung-killing as when Lowry painted his grey skies (which was post-Great War, not Victorian!) but still pretty shit. You might be living in a green Southern village where people cycle in tweed, but I can assure you that up in the Northern Poorhouse "environmental protection" is always very, very low on the agenda, today as much as yesterday.
If you read my parent comment again, I said "UP TO 20 years ago". As in, we had big, visible, significant problems; then industry decamped, and changes in the landscape have been significant since then. Did previous policies improve things? Sure, but the real game changer was moving the shit-making factories elsewhere: China, India, and developing countries. No amount of policies will fully protect the environment if a man's paycheck depends on not protecting it. Dude, we still run DIESEL TRAINS, for god's sake. In 2016. In what is basically a flat country.
> "going through the same pains "the West" experienced up to 20 years ago"
20 years? The West was experiencing part of this 1 century and a half ago and it wasn't nowhere as bad since it was mostly a smog problem.
The problem you are seeing here with toxic substances in the air was much smaller and solved with regulation way before they started outsourcing their industry to those countries.
I've never been to Delhi, I don't have plans to go, so I can't really explain why this makes me so angry. It's the tragedy of the commons, an entire city of people slowly killing each other.
What's going on over there? Can anyone who knows more about India explain why the people and the government would let things get like this? To pollute our own towns to the point of suffocation says something terrible about human nature.
It's easy to blame the people and the gov't for pollution, but having lived in both India and China the story is quite different. You have swathes of population that need employment . In order to keep the economy productive you have to have manufacturing activity. To support the manufacturing activity one must produce energy. Naturally coal being abundant and cheap becomes the first choice for governments to use for energy production. While we can criticise the coal plants for being polluting without them there is no source of employment. Most renewables are too expensive/unreliable to use and nuclear power plants alway come along with a lot of controversy.
Another thing to note is that the overall pollution per capita in India or China is far less than any of the western nations. Its just that these countries have way too many people in too less space.
As for schools closing due to pollution, I can say that this is common all across asia. The thing is many of the industries that pollute go unchecked partly due to corruption and partly due to the fact that if they are fined they will just withdraw from the area of operation causing many to loose their means of living. In a place like india this becomes a question of life or death because many earn too less to save enough.
The question that lies ahead is more "how can we solve this issue" than to lay blame. Perhaps the government needs to look at what the pollution is made up of and specifically target those industries.
> Another thing to note is that the overall pollution per capita in India or China is far less than any of the western nations.
This isn't true, not for the type of pollution relevant to this discussion anyway (particulates suspended in air). A single two stroke moped releases 10-1000X the amount of air pollution per kilometer as a modern car with a catalytic converter, despite the latter being much larger. India is full of such mopeds. Here's a study about them: http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4749
The figure you cited, that citizens of developed nations pollute more than citizens of developing nation , is specifically a statistic about carbon dioxide emissions. Most other kinds of pollution are worse per capita in developing industrial nations owing to less strict emissions controls.
Lack of foresight. Instead of making private vehicle ownership difficult like in Singapore, vehicle sale is encouraged.
The entire city is ripped up for massive construction projects. There's massive amount of construction related debris in the air.
There is a very wide spectrum of economic disparity. There is a significant section of population which probably use wood fire or coal for cooking or heating during winter months.
Tonnes of wet garbage/refuse is burnt in and around the city.
It doesn't rain or get very windy during the winter months thus the air remains stagnant.
A very high population density. Most people don't understand the difference between fog and smog. No initiative from the government to educate the population or raise awareness.
The government structure in India just lays out too many bureaucratic hurdles when an immediate action is needed in such situations. When the PM2.5 levels are 5x to 8x the safety threshold, there should be enough power and balls in the hands of some leadership to enforce a complete and indefinite curfew for greater good but sadly that will never happen.
Having a month of odd-even plate curfew of private vehicles will not help clear up the air where PM2.5 levels are beyond toxic. A three days shut down of schools is not going to help as well.
In my view, there should be the strictest curfew until PM2.5 levels are sustained to 100 or below for a month before anybody is even allowed to leave home unless somebody can think of a better way to save people from an upcoming epidemic of smoke/particulate related degenerative diseases which will affect an entire generation which is currently growing up in Delhi.
Leonardo Dicaprio's interview with Sunita Narain in Before the flood is a very good explanation of why this happens. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90CkXVF-Q8M (starting from 33:20 for 5 mins).
But Delhi is also an amazing place! There's nowhere else quite like it in the world. Its colorful, rich in culture, in history, in food, tradition and experience. The city is more than just its air quality!
Can I recommend picking up a copy of William Dalrymple's "City of Djinns"?
Among other things, anecdotally the locals mention lack of enforced fuel regulations as one problem. Apparently there is a lot of adulterants in the fuel used for cars.
I was in Delhi during the diwali celebrations. The air smells like half-burned logwood. I initially thought that someone in the neighbourhood has lit fallen leaves on fire. Little did I know that farmers all around the city are lighting crop stubbles. Come diwali eve and the air turned acrid, a poisonous cocktail of burnt diesel particles, smoke and smell of burnt gun-powder. It was a real Nasty experience (it's way worse than my experience in Inland Empire CA in summer). Even Google weather shows the weather condition as "smoke".
Just finished watching the film Before The Flood and the representative from India's Centre For Science and Environment really frustrated and upset me. She was blaming US consumption as the source of the problem and how we don't practice what we preach. Our air is not poisonous, we don't have 300 million citizens without power living in poverty. The US has some of the best and greatest companies working on energy (see Tesla) and it is time India stop blaming the US and start putting in the work on their own.
Even on absolute levels, India's pollution is a fraction of US. US also still gets 60% electricity from fossil fuels. It is time US fixes their science and education when a major political candidate and half of their population are climate change deniers. Oh, and they are the most polluting in the world, even in per capita numbers.
PM2.5 and PM10 corruption are dangerous only for people in the region and are not responsible for global warming, which affects everyone. In essence, India is killing its own people and US is killing everyone.
> Even on absolute levels, India's pollution is a fraction of US.
I don't think this is true for particulate pollution. You may only be talking about carbon dioxide.
Also, "Somewhere else is worse" isn't a good defense, especially when it may not even be true; it's just deflection. India has a real problem here with air pollution, and pointing fingers at other nations won't fix it.
No denying there is a problem and that we should work on a solution, it is just getting media attention now. Politicians now are under public pressure to fix it.
The person I replied to was saying that India's PM2.5 pollution is equatable to CO2 pollution done by the US. Which is really not true, plus he saw that opinion in a documentary about climate change. Which would be a valid opinion.
Carbon footprint and particulate matter are two different issues. The US has an enormous carbon footprint, but the air quality in the US is much better than India's. This also includes densely populated places like Manhattan. Increase in PM2.5, PM10, NO2 and SO2 directly affects and damages the lungs of healthy individuals. Yes the US has a carbon footprint problem, and yes they're atleast trying to solve it. But their citizens aren't choking. People in New Delhi are. Stop trying to conflate the two issues. Long term climate change != particulate matter in the air we breathe, though they're both important.
In my opinion, particulate matter is a problem that will be solved with a small amount of effort. And now in India it will be, we had similar scare in 1998 and Delhi became the first city in the world to convert entire public transportation plus all the for-hire auto-rickshaws to CNG.
On the other hand, an entire political party in USA denies climate change is even real. Plus, it's not a problem that will be fixed at all, we can merely contain it's effects.
Fact check. Total US CO2 emissions as of 2014 was 5.3 million, India's was 2.3 million. That's not a huge difference. Also, China produces twice the amount of CO2 as the US [see 1]. India has 700M people who use cow dung as their source of fire. Once India progresses in terms of fuels they will overtake the US and potentially China.
So basically you are saying that the US emissions are more than 2x India's.
Taking into account that India has 3x the population of the US then it means that
US emissions are 6 times bigger than India in terms of population
How does it make sense to say that the smaller population of US deserves way more energy than the 4x population of India. Just because the US economy is better? And does the better US economy enable people all over the world or just the US? If things are fair, such an argument wouldn't even come up. Of course, we don't live in a fair world.
I am not saying that developing countries should just pollute as they wish. But the developed world have not been saints in this regard.
3. The US has gone through similar stages of growth. Pollution in cities dropped as measures were taken to improve the quality of life over there, and as technology improved.
That's the wrong metric you're looking at. If the US and India both stopped making cars or invested in lower pollution manufacturing methods, that would reduce the pollutant output. It would also reduce GDP.
Neither country is willing to sacrifice their growth and industry, and so the whole world chooses to keep boiling the frog.
I think the point being made is that America made harsher pollution laws to fix pollution internally, with the side effect that pollution was exported to factories that did the manufacturing (and polluting) in other nations.
Until very recently (in historic terms), America was the consumer of a large share of goods produced in those markets.
So I don't think you can say technology improvements are a prime reason for mfg pollution dropping in America. It is A reason, but not the only.
But India's CO2 emissions are some 15x greater in terms of GDP. Assuming a straight-line consumption path, as India continues to grow economically its CO2 output will -- much as China's did -- start outpacing the US. (This has, incidentally, been at the heart of BRIC arguments against multilateral ecological controls: "You WEIRDOs made your fortune without caring about the environment, and now you want us to stifle our own growth!")
And umm, US oursources its polluting industries to China. Maybe compare on consumption.
Plus the BRICS (atleast India), are willing to settle with some financial and technological help in moving to renewables. But of course, that's not happening.
India's population is a problem we have created ourselves. If you look at forest cover, US has 2x forest cover of India's. So yes for once I agree Indian's should stop looking outside and start taking responsibility for our problem and solve them ourselves.
US is 3 times the size of India so we can't directly compare on the basis of forest cover alone. And forests help as a CO2 sink but they don't do much against other harmful emissions and PM
I downvoted your other comment, because as someone who doesn't often agree with mainstream environmentalism, I've been called a "problem" or a "denier" or whatever many times in the past, usually by people who seem to think that I don't understand or care to learn some indisputable truth. I'm constantly seeking out information about this and other science from all manner of sources, and constantly trying to re-evaluate my beliefs and stay rational. You call for America to "fix education" but your own tone is overwhelmingly condescending. You must realize that rhetoric like yours alienates precisely those who want to hear new perspectives.
And then not an hour later, you imply that there would be no point in trying to "educate" people like myself because it is too late and the planet is now ruined. Go figure.
Just curious, what is your opinion on nuclear fission as a large-scale energy source?
Well, with all the scientific knowledge and education you can get in USA, you guys still believe that GMO are harmful (while they can solve world hunger), have tons of anti-vaccers, flat-earthers, young earth creationist and climate change deniers. You are welcome to question the current wisdom, but to take a non sensical position not supported by any scientific reasoning is not seeking out information.
Nuclear is the cleanest energy as per records, and causes far less deaths/cancer than coal etc. However, I don't expect a country like India to implement all the precautions and take care of maintenance, when even Japan didn't do due procedures. I would take wind and solar over any other form of energy.
I believe this is your error in a nutshell. The American environmentalist movement alone has pro- and anti-vaccine factions, pro- and anti-GMO factions, and pro- and anti-nuclear factions. If you lump these people together with various other political and religious groups, just about any sweeping judgement you make is going to be wrong.
I don't want to get any more confrontational about this, but the world is much more complicated than you seem to think it is, and most people don't fit into your stereotypes. The current wisdom is just that, it is not the only position that will ever make any sense, and carrying on as if it is will only make you look foolish in the long term.
About nuclear power, those are good points. I'd point out that at least Japan did build passive-safe reactors, and at least to our knowledge no one has been hurt yet by the Fukushima incident. Any community without effective building codes is definitely not the place for that kind of project, though. I like wind and solar as useful tools, but I question some of our current policies which can incentivize using them even where engineering would suggest better options. In any case this is the kind of stuff I'm actually interested in talking about.
I'm not sure what is the best way to address this air problem in Indian and Chinese cities, but the status quo is horrible (burning wood and coal, and running unfiltered diesel engines). Using energy in more efficient and prudent ways might be their best bet in the short term, but that kind of progress is very hard to manage at scale.
> you guys still believe that GMO are harmful (while they can solve world hunger), have tons of anti-vaccers, flat-earthers, young earth creationist and climate change deniers
You do realise there's 300 million people in the US, yes?
Do you not know that in these circles you must believe in..
1. Climate change
2. Vote for Clinton
It's America and Silly Valley says you must think like they do otherwise your a deplorable! Please come back when you have learned how to be a good silly valley robot! It's America after all...
The French built 1960's style reactors and have a perfect safety record, 85% of electricity comes from Nuclear.
With i) modern designs and ii) re-investment in the tech, which hasn't seen advancement in 20 years, we'd solve the problem quickly.
Fukishima is avoidable, and Chenobyl ... was insanity, not even really a 'nuclear accident' (they were running reactors out in the open, without any containment or safety measures - like making sarin gas on a campfire).
Obviously it comes along with other complexities and challenges, but most of them - even long term storage of used fuel - can be addressed.
There's enough known Uranium deposits to power us for the next few hundred years - and that's even when we have not been looking for more deposits for 40 years.
Even without any 'new ideas' - we could be CO2 free within 10 years. The entire world.
We could even build CO2 'scrubbers' to pull CO2 out of the air.
Nuclear reactors are not actually as complicated as they seem, they are actually quite basic.
We have the solution in front of its, it just takes the political will, and intelligent information campaigns.
"representative from India's Centre For Science and Environment really frustrated and upset me"
-> please don't be upset over what one individual has to say
"how we don't practice what we preach"
-> that's true for every country US, India and other countries
"Our air is not poisonous"
-> really!!??
"we don't have 300 million citizens without power living in poverty"
-> that's great. why are you comparing with a country that does have that many people below poverty?
"India stop blaming the US and start putting in the work on their own"
-> true.
My viewpoint is just that saying "Google x" with no rationale or point is not helpful to a conversation. I have no independent desire to expound on the leak myself. I noticed your user tag is green and wanted to offer an explanation of downvotes you might get.
PM10, PM2.5 is different from other pollution like CO2.
CO2 is causing a lot of damage for the whole planet in long run, but in short it is neutral for local communities. Still getting off CO2 is a challenge that we don't have a good answer to (but working on it).
PM10, PM2.5 are air debris which are causing a lot of damage to people around, but don't have long term global impact. With current technologies most of the first world countries are able to keep them at low level even with significant fossil fuel usage. The key is to have cars with good emission standards, heat systems with efficient burning cycles, air particle filters...
PM10, PM2.5 you can feel, CO2 is invisible to our senses. I was shocked how heavy New Delhi air is when I visited this year. They are trying to fix by using more CNG vehicles, but with current income level and crumbling infrastructure it will most likely take decades.
In fact, thus article could be termed as fairly incorrect. The pollution exists, but the reasoning is wrong. The firecracker usage this year was much less than last year because of a lot of pollution campaigns.
The problem is millions of tons of agricultural waste being burned in neighboring states. It's an interesting problem to which there is no ready answer. The govt is trying to introduce "seeders" which can help farmers plant their farms without burning older waste... but it's too expensive for the poor farmers to adopt.
Some of us are thinking about how to cobble together seeders using old tractor parts,etc.
TLDR - if you know a cheap way to plant in fields, without burning the hay of the last crop, you will solve the North Indian pollution problem to a large degree.
Other problems exist - but that is being addressed.
It's mentioned in the article. In section "The road to hell":
> “Fireworks during Diwali marginally added to the pollution… But other things inside Delhi did not drastically change. So the smog is mainly due to smoke from farm fires,” Kejriwal said.
> Every year around this time, farmers in Punjab and Haryana—the predominantly agricultural states to the west and northwest of Delhi—burn the leftover straw in their rice and wheat fields. This is the cheapest way to prepare the land for the next season of sowing.
I just came to visit New Delhi from the US and the air is indeed horrible. Visibility is very low and it's not the usual winter fog. My eyes are itchy and am developing some sinus headache. (I'm not generally susceptible to any respiratory issues). Masks have all sold out.
Reported PM 2.5 and PM 10 levels have reached new records. One newspaper showed that the levels for some metrics are how high that the usual meters are all maxed out and can't even measure it.
It's worth keeping in mind that urban activity accounts for only ~20℅ of the particulate matter in Delhi. Take a look at the following graph. Other major Indian cities like Mumbai are run very similarly to Delhi, and yet, their levels are 80℅ lower.
There was a more detailed article I read a few months ago (nytimes?) that went into the geographical details of how regional airflow and weather patterns play a major role in explaining the huge variation you see in the above chart.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 194 ms ] threadEven if you could magically ban all polluting industry tomorrow unless scrubbers were installed within 30 days and all cars were burning natgas I don't know if it would be enough. At some point real soon I imagine water is going to start reaching toxic levels from rain pulling all the toxins out of the sky. And then ecosystems starting to collapse.
However different compounds of arsenic have different toxicity - elemental arsenic is most toxic, organic arsenic less so, so perhaps that's what they do - convert it to a less toxic form.
Interestingly mercury is the opposite - elemental mercury isn't very toxic (because it's a metal and just doesn't absorb, it just stays as a clump of metal). But organic mercury is very toxic because the organic part makes it available to interfere with biological processes.
Nah, that stuff in the sky is mostly carbon (from burning straw, and other low temperature fires) which is not toxic to drink (in fact at low levels it makes water taste sweet) and perhaps some random hydrocarbons which would rapidly decompose.
The worse stuff is various nitrogen compounds (acid rain), but even those don't accumulate in water. Those are made in engines, not from regular fires.
Drinking and breathing have very different profiles for what is toxic.
India's major population centers face a similar problem to Los Angeles: they're backed by a major mountain range (the Himalaya) which tends to bottle-up pollution. The second problem is that there are are roughly 30x the people living in that area (~500 million vs. ~15 million for LA).
Indoors: it depends on the specific threats you're looking to eliminate. Generally these include:
1. Particulates. A HEPA or electrostatic filter should help.
2. Ozone: Houseplants.
3. Other contaminants, including sulfer oxides and nitrogen oxides: possibly activated charcoal or zeolite.
See: https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/indoors/air/ozone_ge...
We talked to her mom two days ago and she says it's so bad now she can't even see the road when she goes out in an auto.
Her brothers latest post to Facebook is "feeling suffocated! Have to get out of this city!"
When I was there two years ago, my first time in India, I had no idea what to expect. The second the plane landed and we were pulling up to the gate my very first comment was "Do you smell something burning?" To my wife.
The second I got into the concourse I knew what it was. The airport was filled with smog. It was a little shocking.
The fact that it's gotten so much worse that two years later you can't even see the road is mind blowing.
I thought kejriwals plan for limiting the roads to odd plate numbers one day then even the next was a good idea to help cut the pollution.
The problem was apparently the people, just like here, hated it because it was his plan and not modi's, plus the people never would have followed it because well the saying cutting your nose off to spite your face is appropriate here. The people won't tolerate that inconvenience even though they are literally killing themselves.
The wife's mother retires in august. She has two months of vacation built up. We told her to simply take the two months come June and move here to the states.
China has bad pollution problems to deal with too. But man looking at India you can see an absolute failure of government to serve the people.
There are too many people in their cities. Delhi is a mess. Bangalore as well. I don't know exactly what indias energy supplies look like but they are certainly past a redline where petrol burning vehicles should be banned. Things moved over to natgas or major mass transit infrastructure should have been the primary focus decades ago.
I can see how it hasn't been though with the astonishing level of corruption and nationalism preventing foreign companies from coming in and investing and solving some of their problems.
It's so sad. I loved the country. It's beautiful. With such character, potential, and such life! But it's just become such a cesspool. Homelessness, corruption, rapes, pollution, human trafficking, poverty.
Law enforcement is a joke and couldn't enforce anything in that country.
If you get hit by a car and it's a life threatening injury, say your prayers because you are dead. Help will never reach you in time. There are no traffic laws, none that anyone there follows, no one moves for emergency vehicles, it's dog eat dog. Brutal.
It's almost my definition of a failed state. I think the good nature of the people is the only thing keeping it from the giant flush of collapsing civilization.
Again I'm not sure that anything is keeping the country afloat other than the good nature of the people to simply survive.
Just FYI, rape happens in the USA too (cf. Brock Turner). No government can "solve" the rape problem.
I grew up in India. I had a decent number of Indian women as friends, who were close enough that they'd tell me very personal details. Not one of them ever mentioned being assaulted to me.
I then moved to the US. And about 1 in 5 women I've come to know have told me that they were assaulted. This ties in well with the official statistics[1], which works to roughly 500,000 women being raped per year.
On the other side, here's a news article claiming that ~34,000 women were raped in India in 2015 [2]. In a country with ~500 million women, that's a pretty small number (with the caveat that even 1 rape is 1 too many, in my view).
So please, enlighten us with where you got your "order of magnitude more" number from.
[1] http://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/publications_nsvrc_...
[2] http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/india-34000-cases-rape...
The level of barbarism inflicted on women in India during acts of rape is chilling. Like Isis levels of savagery.
That's how it's an order of magnitude worse.
And rarely is anyone charged let alone convicted for such brutality.
In the years since I moved to San Francisco, there have been plenty of such cases in just this little area. Example: [1]
And don't even get me started on the rapes of little boys committed by Catholic priests, all over the country.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Richmond_High_School_gang...
As for police investigation the state I live in is quite strict. So much so that even a mere accusation can get you thrown into jail and ruin your life. So charges are brought against the perpetrators, and the judicial system is continuously improving. To say that "it doesn't exist" is a blatant hyperbole that honestly I believe reeks of malicious intent.
As characterizing India's situation as special, or extraordinary in comparison to any first-world country is extremely dishonest. So while Rape is most definitely a problem, and the judicial system in India is especially lacking, the criminality is not.
There are many other cases out there, but they don't get the same voice in the media.
That doesn't help anything. Both things aren't problems, you bringing up another country's problems doesn't make your country look better.
It's like saying "Our country has illegal loan sharking? Well, your country has immoral bankers, so there!". Just muddying the waters is what you're doing.
You have a term for it - "eve teasing".
Also, you guys tend to have a big slant towards victim shaming - no decent woman will get raped. This is generally in the countryside.
In the big cities, many countries have issued travel advisories because of rape to avoid India for female travelers.
So yes, there is a qualitative difference between Indian rape and western rape. Don't muddy the waters with other matters of sexual misconduct. We're talking about India here.
Even the majority of mythologies, and social perceptions don't victim blame in the case of rape so I don't know where this "no decent woman will get raped" is coming from. However I will admit that there's still a perception that going out at night is dangerous which, even as a guy, I subscribe to for the most part. It is nullified if I'm going with others, and depending on the area. Unfortunately there's still a social stigma associated to the rape victim, which is changing.
"So yes, there is a qualitative difference between Indian rape and western rape."
What a load of bullocks. There's a "qualitative difference" between the crimes of all countries as all crimes are dependent on their specific geographies, culture, and people, which all invariably change. This is the case even in the USA.
"In the big cities, many countries have issued travel advisories because of rape to avoid India for female travelers."
Based on what? One anecdotal case? Or based on what statistic? Or is it just manufactured? I mean what proof do you have to actually make it a valid claim?
That's a specious argument. There are differences between crimes of all cultures, and there are similarities. One huge difference is that rape videos are widely distributed and sold in India, without much social condemnation. That indicates a level of acceptance and social integration not present in most other countries. http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/asia/2016/10/al-jazeera-purch...
> Based on what?
http://qz.com/346172/what-countries-around-the-world-tell-wo...
The travel advisories are out there. Not just rape, but lewd acts and molestations. Are these travel advisories well founded? Maybe, maybe not. But the fact is that they exist.
India's average education attainment is worse than that of Libya and even contemporary Iraq; unlike most countries there exist no path for prosperity via education for the majority of Indians, since it is a de-facto linguistic apartheid state.
Its per-capita incomes too are lower than Libya, and on comparable terms with Iraq and Syria. This, achieved, in about 70 years of peace, without colonial blood-sucking.
By every definition, India is a failed state.
Some will try to wriggle away from this by claiming, education is not important, or that money is not important, or by pointing to the outsourcing businesses (which I hear are smaller than the Yoga industry in the US), but these are parochial status-quoists, or silly romantics. There far too many of the latter.
The rape issue is complicated - the incidents are indeed ISIS like barbarity, from a civilization that has historically valued women (before the Islamic and Victorian invaders, and their now celebrated cruelty).
The stats might show indeed that the numbers are smaller per-capita than developed nations (even after accounting for under-reporting), but for some reason those who commit rape tend to be extremely sadistic and cruel.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragile_States_Index
60 years ago, John Galbraith, the economist and Ambassador to India, called India a "functional anarchy". He meant that the country survived despite the government, and not because of it.
It has survived 60 years since Galbraith's keen observation. It will continue to do so.
However, the working-class people I've come across don't seem to be worried about it from a health perspective (or they don't show it off). Infact my friend's wedding had a lot of crackers. Life as usual for them.
For a comparison, here's what Red Fort looks like at 4pm, 05-NOV-2016 (my pic is about 30hrs older than this comment): https://twitter.com/HashNuke/status/795380966109810688
And this is what it is supposed to look like: https://www.flickr.com/photos/wheresmichi/433396865/
> It took decades. Los Angeles had its first real smog attack during World War II, a smog strong enough that some people suspected a Japanese chemical attack. But it wasn’t until 1975 that the U.S. required new cars to have catalytic converters, “the key piece of technology that allowed everything to change,” according to Mary Nichols, chairman of California’s Air Resources Board.
It feels like (after having lived there) these cities have crossed the threshold for number of people/cars/houses/offices per unit area and the way forward is to force expansion of cities - - reduce number of high rises that can be built - reduce number of cars that can be produced or sold - force/incentivize offices and industries to move out of these big cities - large, safe and economical state owned public transport
If they had left it up to the individual, as India has, we would experience similar air quality.
I should add that California has tighter emissions standards than the federal government, and some vehicles will be sold with special emissions control equipment in California. For example, I had a GMC C1500 truck, which shipped with an optional Air Injection Reactor if you bought it in California.
California has been working on this since the late 60s. They were the first state to require better emissions controls on cars, they have tightened regulations on businesses and industries that would normally negatively contribute, and the push the problems of dirty power generation into other states.
p.s. it's also overcrowded, and there's no public transit. did i mention the food is terrible?
This has some relevant statistics from the South Coast Air Quality Management District which is larger larger than just LA County but includes it:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-summer-smog-2016...
It's an uphill battle. There are more hybrid vehicles on the road these days and California has pretty stringent emissions requirements, the Dept. of Motor Vehicles requires you to have a smog check every two years on your car. However the population of L.A has been booming for over a decade now and despite investment in mass transit it hasn't put much any appreciable dent in automobile traffic.
Delhi and LA have similar problems in that they are both at the foothills of a mountain range (in Delhi it's the Aravali mountains). This makes it much more difficult for the pollution to dissipate once it's there, because the mountains obstruct wind and airflow. LA has been making efforts for decades to reduce emissions, but the payoff has been incredibly slow for this reason.
Of course, Delhi is a much larger and densely populated city - the Delhi metro area has almost the same population as the entire state of Texas - and it's also nowhere near as wealthy as LA. All three of those factors make it much harder to address pollution directly and much slower for the benefits to actually start manifesting.
http://www.ci.slc.ut.us/winter-inversions-what-are-they-and-...
http://mjhoy.com/images/barca/10122014-P1200997.jpg
Texas ~ 27 million
Delhi - 18.6 million
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Texas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi
Here is the link to the official Indian census data:
http://www.census2011.co.in/census/city/49-delhi.html
which states:
"As per provisional reports of Census India, population of Delhi in 2011 is 11,034,555; of which male and female are 5,882,117 and 5,152,438 respectively. Although Delhi city has population of 11,034,555; its urban / metropolitan population is 16,349,831 of which 8,750,834 are males and 7,598,997 are females."
That is not 22 million or 25 million, it is 16.3 million!
The population of Texas is an order of magnitude more in population. So yeah the OP was wrong.
Please substantiate your claim of otherwise with actual data.
Source:
http://www.census2011.co.in/census/city/49-delhi.html
http://pibmumbai.gov.in/scripts/detail.asp?releaseId=E2011IS...
2) "It is the most expansive city in India—about 1,484 square kilometres (573 sq mi). It has a population of about 25 million, making it the second most populous city after Mumbai and most populous urban agglomeration in India and 3rd largest urban area[7] in the world"
source: Third sentence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi
Your link says 21.8 millions for Delhi metro (as your quote specifies it). A figure that is dated from 2011. At that time, according to your other link, Texas was somewhere around 25.6 millions.
So, Delhi metro population was about 85% of Texas. Given the comparative growths, this percentage has probably raised a bit during the last 5 years. Overall "almost" looks to me as a correct approximation.
"According to the 2011 census of India, the population of Delhi is 16,753,235."
There is no source for the figure of "Delhi metro area" so not really very scientific is it? 2011 was the last year for which there was census data.
I hope you enjoyed the place as much as I did even with the pollution!
I think most there don't really understand the health hazard or how bad it is for them because it's all they know. Put them in Kansas City for a week and send them back and I promise you'll see some people freaking out heh.
In my poor design vocabulary, I pointed out at the Sun, and joked to my designer friends that one of them put a vector mask on the Sun.
I couldn't go around much after the friend's wedding. I wanted to do a 6am jog at Rajpath and India Gate. But a friend joked that it was pointless to look at "India Gate as a silhouette". At about 1pm when going to Humayun's tomb, I passed by Rajpath and realized it wasn't a joke. I was scared to venture out anymore after a day of roaming. I hope to visit again sometime.
Its not just that. Even if people are aware of health hazards, they think they can make exceptions for themselves because one person isn't gonna make things worse.
I lived first half of my life in relatively cleaner Himalayan regions, and when I moved to Delhi, I was almost always sneezing. I already was miserable living there, and now its worse. :(
So no nobody is going to "freak out"
I was in Kathmandu in April and you can hardly breathe not because of smoke but mostly because of dust (as construction for road and water supply is going for a while.)
I lived in India and been to Mumbai many times. Man, the whole city stinks.
What is interesting is watching how they try to fix it. There was much noise about pollution during the Beijing Olympics - how is the situation there, right now? Can it be a model for Delhi? Will these countries have to walk the same path we did, or will technology let their manufacturing capabilities survive?
The government has tried various half-hearted measures to fight the problem. For example, cars are banned from the roads on certain days based on their license plate numbers. Of course, many Chinese people who can afford a car can afford two, so it's fairly easily worked around. Cars aren't the major cause of the problem anyway, so it's a bit pointless. The people don't seem to care all that much, so there isn't much motivation to fix it.
I really hope they can figure it out, but for right now, Beijing's handling of pollution isn't a good model for anybody.
20 years?
Ha ha ...
No, this was a problem that started with the industrial revolution, and policies were introduced to fix the issues shortly thereafter.
18th-century UK was probably the first bit of 'overt environmental problems', the Thames was a mess, smog everywhere ...
But it was addressed long, long ago.
Different strokes for different folks in different times ... but it doesn't take 'high tech' to have decent policy that addresses these issues.
India has some pretty deep problems, this is only one of many symptoms.
I'm saying that 'environmental consciousness' as a civic issue started in London in the early 19th century, not '20 years ago'.
By the time pollution was bad from the plastic-chemical revolutions of the 1960's there was already a conscientiousness very well developed.
One major difference: the pollution from coal in the industrial age was visible. From the 1950's chemical revolution - it was not. And so it wasn't evident to the average person that the pollution was 'hurting'. Much like smoking - it takes some science etc. to show it's bad.
I meant to say '19th century' :)
England in the 80s was a polluted clusterfuck as much as anywhere, maybe not as lung-killing as when Lowry painted his grey skies (which was post-Great War, not Victorian!) but still pretty shit. You might be living in a green Southern village where people cycle in tweed, but I can assure you that up in the Northern Poorhouse "environmental protection" is always very, very low on the agenda, today as much as yesterday.
If you read my parent comment again, I said "UP TO 20 years ago". As in, we had big, visible, significant problems; then industry decamped, and changes in the landscape have been significant since then. Did previous policies improve things? Sure, but the real game changer was moving the shit-making factories elsewhere: China, India, and developing countries. No amount of policies will fully protect the environment if a man's paycheck depends on not protecting it. Dude, we still run DIESEL TRAINS, for god's sake. In 2016. In what is basically a flat country.
20 years? The West was experiencing part of this 1 century and a half ago and it wasn't nowhere as bad since it was mostly a smog problem.
The problem you are seeing here with toxic substances in the air was much smaller and solved with regulation way before they started outsourcing their industry to those countries.
What's going on over there? Can anyone who knows more about India explain why the people and the government would let things get like this? To pollute our own towns to the point of suffocation says something terrible about human nature.
Another thing to note is that the overall pollution per capita in India or China is far less than any of the western nations. Its just that these countries have way too many people in too less space.
As for schools closing due to pollution, I can say that this is common all across asia. The thing is many of the industries that pollute go unchecked partly due to corruption and partly due to the fact that if they are fined they will just withdraw from the area of operation causing many to loose their means of living. In a place like india this becomes a question of life or death because many earn too less to save enough.
The question that lies ahead is more "how can we solve this issue" than to lay blame. Perhaps the government needs to look at what the pollution is made up of and specifically target those industries.
This isn't true, not for the type of pollution relevant to this discussion anyway (particulates suspended in air). A single two stroke moped releases 10-1000X the amount of air pollution per kilometer as a modern car with a catalytic converter, despite the latter being much larger. India is full of such mopeds. Here's a study about them: http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4749
The figure you cited, that citizens of developed nations pollute more than citizens of developing nation , is specifically a statistic about carbon dioxide emissions. Most other kinds of pollution are worse per capita in developing industrial nations owing to less strict emissions controls.
The entire city is ripped up for massive construction projects. There's massive amount of construction related debris in the air.
There is a very wide spectrum of economic disparity. There is a significant section of population which probably use wood fire or coal for cooking or heating during winter months.
Tonnes of wet garbage/refuse is burnt in and around the city.
It doesn't rain or get very windy during the winter months thus the air remains stagnant.
A very high population density. Most people don't understand the difference between fog and smog. No initiative from the government to educate the population or raise awareness.
The government structure in India just lays out too many bureaucratic hurdles when an immediate action is needed in such situations. When the PM2.5 levels are 5x to 8x the safety threshold, there should be enough power and balls in the hands of some leadership to enforce a complete and indefinite curfew for greater good but sadly that will never happen.
Having a month of odd-even plate curfew of private vehicles will not help clear up the air where PM2.5 levels are beyond toxic. A three days shut down of schools is not going to help as well.
In my view, there should be the strictest curfew until PM2.5 levels are sustained to 100 or below for a month before anybody is even allowed to leave home unless somebody can think of a better way to save people from an upcoming epidemic of smoke/particulate related degenerative diseases which will affect an entire generation which is currently growing up in Delhi.
Can I recommend picking up a copy of William Dalrymple's "City of Djinns"?
https://www.amazon.com/City-Djinns-Delhi-William-Dalrymple/d...
If you stay here long enough, you'll slowly start to go crazy. Unless you are part of the 'expat' crew then I guess maybe it's tolerable.
See the following short clip from the film: https://youtu.be/90CkXVF-Q8M?t=36m2s
PM2.5 and PM10 corruption are dangerous only for people in the region and are not responsible for global warming, which affects everyone. In essence, India is killing its own people and US is killing everyone.
I don't think this is true for particulate pollution. You may only be talking about carbon dioxide.
Also, "Somewhere else is worse" isn't a good defense, especially when it may not even be true; it's just deflection. India has a real problem here with air pollution, and pointing fingers at other nations won't fix it.
The person I replied to was saying that India's PM2.5 pollution is equatable to CO2 pollution done by the US. Which is really not true, plus he saw that opinion in a documentary about climate change. Which would be a valid opinion.
In my opinion, particulate matter is a problem that will be solved with a small amount of effort. And now in India it will be, we had similar scare in 1998 and Delhi became the first city in the world to convert entire public transportation plus all the for-hire auto-rickshaws to CNG.
On the other hand, an entire political party in USA denies climate change is even real. Plus, it's not a problem that will be fixed at all, we can merely contain it's effects.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
US emissions are 6 times bigger than India in terms of population
<sarcasm>Everything is awesomeeee</sarcasm>
I am not saying that developing countries should just pollute as they wish. But the developed world have not been saints in this regard.
1. Do you?
2. America doesn't make all the cars in the world.
According to wikipedia, America made just over 12 million vehicles in FY2015, and India made just over 4 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_motor_veh...
I would also point out that India made MORE steel than the USA in the same period. Another polluting industry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_pro...
3. The US has gone through similar stages of growth. Pollution in cities dropped as measures were taken to improve the quality of life over there, and as technology improved.
http://www.businessinsider.in/This-Old-Picture-Of-Manhattan-... .
4. None of the above matters.
That's the wrong metric you're looking at. If the US and India both stopped making cars or invested in lower pollution manufacturing methods, that would reduce the pollutant output. It would also reduce GDP.
Neither country is willing to sacrifice their growth and industry, and so the whole world chooses to keep boiling the frog.
Until very recently (in historic terms), America was the consumer of a large share of goods produced in those markets.
So I don't think you can say technology improvements are a prime reason for mfg pollution dropping in America. It is A reason, but not the only.
Plus the BRICS (atleast India), are willing to settle with some financial and technological help in moving to renewables. But of course, that's not happening.
Sulphates, DDT, particulates and other toxins represent immediate health hazards that we all need to work on, some more than others.
What does that mean and how is it relevant?
CO2 is not causing the smog and elevated PM 2.5/10 levels in Delhi.
Global warming on the other hand. CO2 has ruined the planet permanently.
And then not an hour later, you imply that there would be no point in trying to "educate" people like myself because it is too late and the planet is now ruined. Go figure.
Just curious, what is your opinion on nuclear fission as a large-scale energy source?
Nuclear is the cleanest energy as per records, and causes far less deaths/cancer than coal etc. However, I don't expect a country like India to implement all the precautions and take care of maintenance, when even Japan didn't do due procedures. I would take wind and solar over any other form of energy.
I believe this is your error in a nutshell. The American environmentalist movement alone has pro- and anti-vaccine factions, pro- and anti-GMO factions, and pro- and anti-nuclear factions. If you lump these people together with various other political and religious groups, just about any sweeping judgement you make is going to be wrong.
I don't want to get any more confrontational about this, but the world is much more complicated than you seem to think it is, and most people don't fit into your stereotypes. The current wisdom is just that, it is not the only position that will ever make any sense, and carrying on as if it is will only make you look foolish in the long term.
About nuclear power, those are good points. I'd point out that at least Japan did build passive-safe reactors, and at least to our knowledge no one has been hurt yet by the Fukushima incident. Any community without effective building codes is definitely not the place for that kind of project, though. I like wind and solar as useful tools, but I question some of our current policies which can incentivize using them even where engineering would suggest better options. In any case this is the kind of stuff I'm actually interested in talking about.
I'm not sure what is the best way to address this air problem in Indian and Chinese cities, but the status quo is horrible (burning wood and coal, and running unfiltered diesel engines). Using energy in more efficient and prudent ways might be their best bet in the short term, but that kind of progress is very hard to manage at scale.
You do realise there's 300 million people in the US, yes?
Education seems to be wasted on maybe 30% of the US population. That seems all right to you? Or maybe I should conduct a study?
1. Climate change
2. Vote for Clinton
It's America and Silly Valley says you must think like they do otherwise your a deplorable! Please come back when you have learned how to be a good silly valley robot! It's America after all...
The slope isn't nearly the same.
How?
The French built 1960's style reactors and have a perfect safety record, 85% of electricity comes from Nuclear.
With i) modern designs and ii) re-investment in the tech, which hasn't seen advancement in 20 years, we'd solve the problem quickly.
Fukishima is avoidable, and Chenobyl ... was insanity, not even really a 'nuclear accident' (they were running reactors out in the open, without any containment or safety measures - like making sarin gas on a campfire).
Obviously it comes along with other complexities and challenges, but most of them - even long term storage of used fuel - can be addressed.
There's enough known Uranium deposits to power us for the next few hundred years - and that's even when we have not been looking for more deposits for 40 years.
Even without any 'new ideas' - we could be CO2 free within 10 years. The entire world.
We could even build CO2 'scrubbers' to pull CO2 out of the air.
Nuclear reactors are not actually as complicated as they seem, they are actually quite basic.
We have the solution in front of its, it just takes the political will, and intelligent information campaigns.
No offense to you, but I think all those "experts" arguing on TV about this should just go and live in Delhi for a week.
"how we don't practice what we preach" -> that's true for every country US, India and other countries
"Our air is not poisonous" -> really!!??
"we don't have 300 million citizens without power living in poverty" -> that's great. why are you comparing with a country that does have that many people below poverty?
"India stop blaming the US and start putting in the work on their own" -> true.
What were your findings?
The Indian representative blames US consumption for global CO2 emissions not for the air pollution levels of Delhi's air.
CO2 is causing a lot of damage for the whole planet in long run, but in short it is neutral for local communities. Still getting off CO2 is a challenge that we don't have a good answer to (but working on it).
PM10, PM2.5 are air debris which are causing a lot of damage to people around, but don't have long term global impact. With current technologies most of the first world countries are able to keep them at low level even with significant fossil fuel usage. The key is to have cars with good emission standards, heat systems with efficient burning cycles, air particle filters...
PM10, PM2.5 you can feel, CO2 is invisible to our senses. I was shocked how heavy New Delhi air is when I visited this year. They are trying to fix by using more CNG vehicles, but with current income level and crumbling infrastructure it will most likely take decades.
In fact, thus article could be termed as fairly incorrect. The pollution exists, but the reasoning is wrong. The firecracker usage this year was much less than last year because of a lot of pollution campaigns.
The problem is millions of tons of agricultural waste being burned in neighboring states. It's an interesting problem to which there is no ready answer. The govt is trying to introduce "seeders" which can help farmers plant their farms without burning older waste... but it's too expensive for the poor farmers to adopt.
Some of us are thinking about how to cobble together seeders using old tractor parts,etc.
TLDR - if you know a cheap way to plant in fields, without burning the hay of the last crop, you will solve the North Indian pollution problem to a large degree.
Other problems exist - but that is being addressed.
> “Fireworks during Diwali marginally added to the pollution… But other things inside Delhi did not drastically change. So the smog is mainly due to smoke from farm fires,” Kejriwal said.
> Every year around this time, farmers in Punjab and Haryana—the predominantly agricultural states to the west and northwest of Delhi—burn the leftover straw in their rice and wheat fields. This is the cheapest way to prepare the land for the next season of sowing.
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/nov/11...
If the state really wanted to help, they'd do well to believe their word is that of the God, and actively help with practices.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Crop-fires-already-...
Reported PM 2.5 and PM 10 levels have reached new records. One newspaper showed that the levels for some metrics are how high that the usual meters are all maxed out and can't even measure it.
http://qz.com/829182/this-one-chart-shows-delhis-apocalyptic...
There was a more detailed article I read a few months ago (nytimes?) that went into the geographical details of how regional airflow and weather patterns play a major role in explaining the huge variation you see in the above chart.