21–30 of 165 posts
There's a neat feature in the BMW X5 xDrive45e (a petrol plug-in hybrid SUV) - when you enter a low emissions zone, it automatically switches to battery power. Moving emissions away from the tailpipe in heavily populated areas seems like a great idea. There's no free lunch though. The emissions are still happening, just in different places where they're, ideally, less likely to affect people. It's a better situation…
I hope this will lead to changes in roads in London and other places. The closest school to me in London is next to a busy road with twice the legal level of no2, you can see all the buildings along that road are noticeably blacker from exhaust smoke. While electric cars may help a bit, rubber from breaking and tyres is an issue, and cares have been getting much bigger over the last 5 years.
The efficiency of combined use of trains, electric buses and bicycles dwarfs electric cars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport
It is indeed sad that a 9 year old died from purely preventable air pollution. However, through her death and the resulting judgement, we (royal) can start holding polluters and companies liable. And through that, we can start to effect strong climate based change, through a series of steep punishments of wrongful death and the like. I sincerely hope her death is not in vain, but as a loud bell to start a wave of cha…
Sorry for nitpicking on a serious comment, but wouldn't using the royal we here mean that you personally are going to hold polluters and companies liable?
I go to London occasionally for work. Since I live in a high-altitude location, I really enjoy running when I travel, since I can go faster and farther and sight see at the same time. The amount of diesel exhaust you breathe in running through London is pretty crazy compared to other cities I've been in. And I know that they have worked very hard to reduce this, so not trying to knock the UK or London itself. Just so…
On the other hand, covid-19 hasn't caused yet as many deaths but we quickly intervened, as it should be.
Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution?
- [0]: https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/40/20/1590/537232...
This pandemic gave me so much to think about air pollution. It puzzles me how we can have, just in Europe, around 800k yearly premature deaths caused by pollution[0] and still not care at all. On the other hand, covid-19 hasn't caused yet as many deaths but we quickly intervened, as it should be. Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution? - [0]: https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/…
During lockdown, back in April and May, there was a noticeable difference in the air quality. It felt different. When we went out for a walk you could also tell the difference in noise pollution from there being so few cars on the roads. It was lovely.
There is a church nearby that we can sometimes hear when the bells ring on the hour at night but during lockdown we could hear them during the day. My wife commented back then how she knew when the area had "returned to normal" as she could no longer hear the church bells when she had lunch in the garden.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry for nitpicking on a serious comment, but wouldn't using the royal we here mean that you personally are going to hold polluters and companies liable?
That's correct, the royal we is a case where you use we to mean I.
Asthma from air pollution completely destroyed my life, that's all my life is about at this point. The first signs are that it's harder to sleep at night, because the mucus goes into your airways. If you feel that, move away far from any street with many cars while you can.
As I got older, it just kind of disappeared - by the time I was 15 or so, I was only very rarely using inhalers.
As an adult, I've travelled a lot to India for work, always staying in big cities, which are filled with 2-stroke rickshaws and are always heavily polluted (e.g. Mumbai, Pune, Delhi). Often a kind of horrible, acrid, thick smog descends after dark when the temperature drops a little. Every time I travel to such places, I have to take my inhalers because I really feel the effects of it! The first time this happened, years ago now, I was really quite shocked - how many deaths must this cause? How could the government allow this, and how could people stand it?
I go to London occasionally for work. Since I live in a high-altitude location, I really enjoy running when I travel, since I can go faster and farther and sight see at the same time. The amount of diesel exhaust you breathe in running through London is pretty crazy compared to other cities I've been in. And I know that they have worked very hard to reduce this, so not trying to knock the UK or London itself. Just so…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> While electric cars may help a bit, rubber from breaking and tyres is an issue In what way are they an issue? Tyre emissions are around 1/20th of the PM2.5 ejected from the exhaust and the airborne proportion is even smaller. Edit: "Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants" has a fairly non-commital "needs more study" finding but they did say "Non-exhaust particulate matter (PM) emissions, ie from brake…
Also PM2.5 is easy to filter out. Any cheap device can filter it out quite efficiently. For NO2 I tried all the most expensive devices, and none of them worked :(