81–90 of 146 posts
After experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic, I have developed the habit of wearing a mask.
I thought that this article will address an elephant in the room but either it missed it or I missed it. My problem with pollution is that… you need to measure it, and those who pollute don’t do it consciously. Anecdotally I often drive through a small town. You can smell pollution, a plastic smell. In winter you can see column of smoke coming out of chimney. Sometimes it’s milky white, sometimes it thick black. Ther…
One way to address this sort of localism (where there's a significant risk that the owners of the factory are slipping the town councillors the odd brown envelope) is a national regulator. The Irish EPA, which was created to take this sort of thing out of the hands of the local authorities, has been very effective in reducing nuisance pollution; the local authorities used to be mostly pretty useless. Any industrial facility of this sort would be required to self-monitor, and would be subject to inspection; it would have to respond to any complaints, and if the regulator wasn't satisfied it could demand improvements, on pain of withdrawing its operating license.
It's interesting to see the number of deaths caused by pollution. But everyone will die of something. Could it be that many of those people whose death was caused by pollution may have been frail and close to death anyway? I wonder if it would be more useful to talk about quality-life-years (QUALYs) lost as a result of pollution. Probably much harder to get that data though.
In 2019, ambient air pollution claimed the lives of young children at alarming rates in several countries. Here's the top 10 list of countries with the highest number of deaths per 100,000 children under 5 due to ambient air pollution: Nigeria – 18.95 Chad – 18.10 Sierra Leone – 12.02 Mali – 10.56 Guinea – 9.90 Niger – 9.64 Cote d'Ivoire - 9.04 Central African Republic - 8.79 Cameroon - 8.69 Burkina Faso - 8.68 These…
Not trying to say we shouldn’t consider this, but it seems like there’s bigger fish to fry first (assuming we can’t fry them all at the same time).
It is easy to be 'green' and 'net-zero' when all you do is exporting your polluting production elsewhere and importing the goods while leaving the dirt on the manufacturer's books, and trade away your own pollution with nifty 'carbon credit' scams. Top marks for never curbing your consumption while claiming the superior virtue position. Extra credits for wagging a damning finger at those 'polluters' that actually mak…
The top ten countries by air pollution listed in another comment hardly produce anything the developed world uses, they mostly export natural resources.
When you look at consumption based accounting for e.g. CO2, the list is very different, namely for 2022:
!. Singapore 2. United Arab Emirates 3. Qatar 4. Saudi Arabia 5. Kuwait 6. Brunei 7. Malta 8. Belgium 9. United States 10. Oman
source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...
One of the most striking aspects of air pollution is how invisible yet pervasive its effects are. Unlike more immediate environmental disasters, air pollution slowly chips away at public health, reducing life expectancy and quality of life, often without dramatic headlines. The comparison to starvation as a "frailty multiplier" is an interesting one; pollution doesn’t always kill directly but makes people more suscep…
The other striking aspect for me is how, as has often been the case, those most affected are the poorest. Levels of asthma in London are highest among kids in the vacinity of the docks where cruise and container ships and moor. They sit there running their engines for power, churning out SO2 and other pollutants. These areas are some of the poorest in London. The same was the case in industrial cities during the indu…
Someone else pointed out that there's very little shipping in central London now. It's all cars and buses causing this pollution.
> In fact if you try to do anything about inner city pollution you can pretty much guarantee an angry pushback.
See how bonkers people got over the ULEZ: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66268073
I wish articles like this would give some attention to how much we've already improved. We used to drive leaded gasoline, for example. The amount of damage that caused puts NOx to shame.
What still baffles me is the reduction in SO2 emissions due to regulations on shipping fuel. How did the shipping industry accept / manage / afford to switch fuels (presumably, to more expensive ones) in order to follow the regulation ; as opposed to delay / deny / deflect, or plain old lobbying the hell against the changes ? Are we in a "Montreal protocol" situation, where the alternative was existing and acceptable…
SO2 was the main driver behind the forest dieback. I'd estimate that the global investments in forrest property (mostly by old money) dwarfs the total cost for the switch to sulfur free fuel. It is remarkable how fast the wheels of progress turn when old money faces the prospect of their assets being washed away.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other striking aspect for me is how, as has often been the case, those most affected are the poorest. Levels of asthma in London are highest among kids in the vacinity of the docks where cruise and container ships and moor. They sit there running their engines for power, churning out SO2 and other pollutants. These areas are some of the poorest in London. The same was the case in industrial cities during the indu…
> Levels of asthma in London are highest among kids in the vicinity of the docks Someone else pointed out that there's very little shipping in central London now. It's all cars and buses causing this pollution. > In fact if you try to do anything about inner city pollution you can pretty much guarantee an angry pushback. See how bonkers people got over the ULEZ: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66268073
There is a dock in the Greenwich area, and another one further down the Thames estuary.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other striking aspect for me is how, as has often been the case, those most affected are the poorest. Levels of asthma in London are highest among kids in the vacinity of the docks where cruise and container ships and moor. They sit there running their engines for power, churning out SO2 and other pollutants. These areas are some of the poorest in London. The same was the case in industrial cities during the indu…
> those most affected are the poorest Please pardon my pedantry but this is by definition what poor is : having less means to escape material woes. Rich people are the ones that can elect to live in healthy areas.