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Most polluted cities of 2018

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Re: Most polluted cities of 2018

#2
How widely known is it that Indian cities are so polluted? I feel like I only hear about pollution in Chinese cities. I feel like the fact that this is dominated by Indian cities would come as a surprise to many.

Re: Most polluted cities of 2018

#3
post #2

How widely known is it that Indian cities are so polluted? I feel like I only hear about pollution in Chinese cities. I feel like the fact that this is dominated by Indian cities would come as a surprise to many.

It was surprising to me. However, only the first page is dominated by India. Most of the cities in the next 3-4 pages are in China.

Re: Most polluted cities of 2018

#5
Mexico City is in rank 704, I didn't expect that. I don't know if Mexico City is doing better or if the other 700 cities are nightmares. Well at least the pollution average in the city went down from 2017 to 2018.

Re: Most polluted cities of 2018

#8
post #5

Mexico City is in rank 704, I didn't expect that. I don't know if Mexico City is doing better or if the other 700 cities are nightmares. Well at least the pollution average in the city went down from 2017 to 2018.

I was also surprised by that. Mexico City has always been a tough place to keep air pollution in check while still having one of the largest population density in North America. This is especially the case since it is in a valley where pollution gets trapped in.

Re: Most polluted cities of 2018

#9
Changing the ranking to the world's most polluted countries really puts into perspective the ecological destruction wrought by the trend of western consumerist fetishism (this isn't to say that the destruction of natural systems is entirely the fault of western citizens, of course).

The top 25 (at least) most polluted countries are all firmly outside what would be considered the western world; it's obvious that the environmental byproducts of materialism and consumerism are simply outsourced to where westerners cannot readily see them. The necessary course of action for an informed and future-minded person seems blindingly obvious - allocate resources only to those corporations and systems that reject the trend of object fetishism and environmental (and social) exploitation.

The classic rebuttal to this stance (i.e., that all corporations naturally engage in this type of exploitative behavior / the standard of living of the exploited region's citizens is being raised as a byproduct of said exploitation / etc.) is ringing more and more hollow. The fact of the matter is that you don't need a new smartphone / TV / whatever nearly as often as we are conditioned to believe.

There is a strange (borderline schizophrenic) attitude that I notice among defenders of entrenched corporate systems (meaning production and consumption symbioses) wherein the defender of the system simultaneously resigns themselves to powerlessness in the face of what they claim are the inevitable (and often negative) byproducts of technological and economic growth and at the same time admit (directly or indirectly) that they willingly add to the conflagration under nothing but the threat of relatively minor social inconvenience (see: Facebook membership, ordering junk from Amazon, using Google services, etc.). It's tiring and bewildering to witness.

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