NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent
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Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent
#2We can pass all the air regulations in America, but it won't matter one bit until China and India get their act together. China has 100% 24/7/365 smog cover along their population centers. So sick of people pushing overbearing regulation in the USA without even holding these countries accountable!
Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent
#3We can pass all the air regulations in America, but it won't matter one bit until China and India get their act together. China has 100% 24/7/365 smog cover along their population centers. So sick of people pushing overbearing regulation in the USA without even holding these countries accountable!
How exactly do you want to hold them accountable? The best thing I can come up with is force restrictions on the sales - you have to prove the production met the known standard. But you can't do that if there are no local alternatives meeting that standard.
Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent
#4We can pass all the air regulations in America, but it won't matter one bit until China and India get their act together. China has 100% 24/7/365 smog cover along their population centers. So sick of people pushing overbearing regulation in the USA without even holding these countries accountable!
Air regulations have an immediate, local effect too. But you're right, we should subsidize clean air in developing countries too. [..Ducks..]
Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent
#5We can pass all the air regulations in America, but it won't matter one bit until China and India get their act together. China has 100% 24/7/365 smog cover along their population centers. So sick of people pushing overbearing regulation in the USA without even holding these countries accountable!
As someone living in the US who visits China every couple of years, I would really love to see China clean up their act (the pollution has become by far my #1 dislike), but I would really hate to see the US loosen pollution regulations because of some weird idea that we shouldn't bother cleaning up our air unless everybody else does too.
I love the fact that when we have air quality warnings, I can't even tell the difference. I hate the fact that half the time I'm in Beijing, I can't comfortably breathe outside. I would hate to see the air quality here made worse just because China hasn't made theirs better.
Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent
#6As an Indian when I come back from overseas this the very first problem I notice, especially when I return from a long trip. The problem is far deep than one can imagine.
A city like Bangalore has almost an impossible amount of scooters on roads. Almost every house has at least one, and most homes have easily 1 for every two people staying in the home. And its not like US where there are laws on building homes. People take a 1200 sqft plot and build 4 floors, with 4 families, so at least 6 two wheelers for a small plot of land. This is even possible because auto rickshaws and buses have gotten expensive. Public transport of any kind is expensive, unpredictable and not worth when you look at the overall comfort and economics of having our own scooter.
At the other hand trees are being cut at an alarming rate. The area where I stay, around 15 years back, had a drive where students from an agricultural campus plotted a tree per home. In the time since a countable few trees remain. People cut trees for various reasons, some which are down right stupid. Reasons go like- A big tree will attract birds who will in turn crap on our cars/scooters, or that chirping birds disturb their morning sleep to impossibility of cutting the tree if grows too high.
The garbage landfill are full. So the government often doesn't collect garbage on time. Sometimes even a whole month passes before the garbage is collected. So you have massive piles of trash(Medical and all other toxic waste included) piling right at the corner of the lane. This causes mosquitoes to breed, and then diseases like dengue spread. The most obvious solution people around the place work to is burn the trash, causing all this toxic fumes to now mix in the air and reach almost everyone's lungs in the area.
On top of this comes industrial pollution. Rivers and lakes are being polluted, encroached and destroyed almost everywhere. Bangalore's lakes have almost disappeared. Many remaining are now cesspools. There was a lake which caught fire recently.
India needs something on the lines of Clean air act, and clean water act urgently. Feasibility of implementation remains a problem though.
Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent
#7We can pass all the air regulations in America, but it won't matter one bit until China and India get their act together. China has 100% 24/7/365 smog cover along their population centers. So sick of people pushing overbearing regulation in the USA without even holding these countries accountable!
Polluted air is a symptom of a system which has little regulation over industrial and commercial waste. This means that while we suffer from the air, they will suffer from all kinds of water and soil pollution. They are inflicting grave health wounds upon themselves (like we did to ourselves earlier). We can hope the people will demand a cleaner environment from the government and industry.
Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent
#8We can pass all the air regulations in America, but it won't matter one bit until China and India get their act together. China has 100% 24/7/365 smog cover along their population centers. So sick of people pushing overbearing regulation in the USA without even holding these countries accountable!
How exactly do you want to hold them accountable? The best thing I can come up with is force restrictions on the sales - you have to prove the production met the known standard. But you can't do that if there are no local alternatives meeting that standard.
Tariffs on products imported from nations with low environmental standards. This taxes the externalities. This doesn't shut off the flow, but it gives protections for companies setting up in the US with those regulations.
Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent
#9As an Indian when I come back from overseas this the very first problem I notice, especially when I return from a long trip. The problem is far deep than one can imagine. A city like Bangalore has almost an impossible amount of scooters on roads. Almost every house has at least one, and most homes have easily 1 for every two people staying in the home. And its not like US where there are laws on building homes. Peopl…
Are most of those scooters 2-stroke or 4-stroke? At that scale, the efficiency and emissions differences could make a big difference.
Re: NASA Data Shows Toxic Air Threat Choking Indian Subcontinent
#10We can pass all the air regulations in America, but it won't matter one bit until China and India get their act together. China has 100% 24/7/365 smog cover along their population centers. So sick of people pushing overbearing regulation in the USA without even holding these countries accountable!
As someone living in the US who visits China every couple of years, I would really love to see China clean up their act (the pollution has become by far my #1 dislike), but I would really hate to see the US loosen pollution regulations because of some weird idea that we shouldn't bother cleaning up our air unless everybody else does too. I love the fact that when we have air quality warnings, I can't even tell the di…
It would probably be much more cost effective for the US to pay Chinese firms to reduce emissions (say, by paying for the installation of more advanced filtering equipment) than it is to try and wring further reductions out of US firms.