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India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

bbc.com

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Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#31

Post by chedine »

BurningFrog wrote: post #25
paulsutter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea and Taiwan have higher population density than India, and Japan is not far off (517/km, 652/km, 412/km, and 334/km, respectively) > 1) India as a whole is overpopulated...

Yeah, I've come to believe that the word "overpopulation" just doesn't mean anything. I would rather say Indian society is badly organized.

Japan, Korea or other countries may also be overpopulated yes. But realize the volume spread. A few millions overpopulation is largely different from an over population of a few billions. The magnitude is incomparable.

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#32

Post by [deleted] »

BurningFrog wrote: post #25
paulsutter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea and Taiwan have higher population density than India, and Japan is not far off (517/km, 652/km, 412/km, and 334/km, respectively) > 1) India as a whole is overpopulated...

Yeah, I've come to believe that the word "overpopulation" just doesn't mean anything. I would rather say Indian society is badly organized.

[deleted]

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#33

Post by briandear »

luckydata wrote: post #27
primitivesuave wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I travel to India every other month for my job. Most agriculture happens on small farms by poor and uneducated people. Introducing new technology and agricultural practices is difficult but is certainly underway in parts of the country. There is also a lack of political will to solve the problem in the particular case of Delhi and its neighboring state of Punjab, and as the parent comment suggested, there is very muc…

Introducing new technologies is difficult with the supposedly highly educated American farmers. Reality is, farmers worldwide are awfully anti-intellectual with a strong contrarian streak and rarely listen to science, even if ironically science has given them their way of life in the form of fertilizers, GMOs etc... Source: I worked for an ag-tech company and I will never EVER have anything to do again with anything…

American farmers are anti-intellectual and rarely listen to science? Citation is really needed, because that’s not what reality shows. It’s very true that farmers are risk adverse, but that’s for good reason: it takes years for “discoveries” to be vetted and people aren’t going to literally bet the farm on trendy tech until it’s proven.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/business/farming-technolo...

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#34

Post by icegreentea2 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #25
paulsutter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea and Taiwan have higher population density than India, and Japan is not far off (517/km, 652/km, 412/km, and 334/km, respectively) > 1) India as a whole is overpopulated...

Yeah, I've come to believe that the word "overpopulation" just doesn't mean anything. I would rather say Indian society is badly organized.

Overpopulation is always relative. It means that the population at hand exceeds the amount that existing systems can cope with. You can argue that Indian society is badly organized and that their current population levels and densities could be sustained with better societal systems, but that doesn't quite capture how difficult it is to fix societal systems.

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#35

Post by option_greek »

georgeburdell wrote: post #24

>Harsh Vardhan, the union minister for health and family welfare, urged people to eat carrots to protect against "night blindness" and "other pollution-related harm to health". A small part of the article, but I just wanted to point out the night vision part is a WWII disinformation campaign by the British to hide the fact that they had sophisticated RADAR: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propagand…

That doesn't mean eating carrots is useless: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-c...

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#36

Post by whatshisface »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #34
BurningFrog wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've come to believe that the word "overpopulation" just doesn't mean anything. I would rather say Indian society is badly organized.

Overpopulation is always relative. It means that the population at hand exceeds the amount that existing systems can cope with. You can argue that Indian society is badly organized and that their current population levels and densities could be sustained with better societal systems, but that doesn't quite capture how difficult it is to fix societal systems.

What's easier, improving infrastructure or lowering the population?

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#37

Post by newyankee »

primitivesuave wrote: post #18
gus_massa wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried "no-till farming"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming It's very popular here in Argentina, and it reuse the stover. [Disclaimer: I live in a city (Buenos Aires), but at least I have a few flowerpots.]

I travel to India every other month for my job. Most agriculture happens on small farms by poor and uneducated people. Introducing new technology and agricultural practices is difficult but is certainly underway in parts of the country. There is also a lack of political will to solve the problem in the particular case of Delhi and its neighboring state of Punjab, and as the parent comment suggested, there is very muc…

It does not help that land holdings in India can be as small as 2-3 acres per person. Water distribution is what decides the overall economy of a given region and due to political reasons it has not been easy to change agricultural policies either (although a big effort is underway).

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#38

Post by [deleted] »

whatshisface wrote: post #36
icegreentea2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overpopulation is always relative. It means that the population at hand exceeds the amount that existing systems can cope with. You can argue that Indian society is badly organized and that their current population levels and densities could be sustained with better societal systems, but that doesn't quite capture how difficult it is to fix societal systems.

What's easier, improving infrastructure or lowering the population?

[deleted]

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#39

Post by stan_rogers »

georgeburdell wrote: post #24

>Harsh Vardhan, the union minister for health and family welfare, urged people to eat carrots to protect against "night blindness" and "other pollution-related harm to health". A small part of the article, but I just wanted to point out the night vision part is a WWII disinformation campaign by the British to hide the fact that they had sophisticated RADAR: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propagand…

Not entirely. What the British did was to take a medical truth - that vitamin A deficiency leads to night blindness, which is often the first reported symptom of vitamin A deficiency - and transform it into a plausible "night vision enhancement" story. Curing or preventing a problem is real; creating a corresponding opposite super-power, not so much.

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#40

Post by fareesh »

krtkush wrote: post #19
fareesh wrote: post #9

Some specific points that may be lost in the headline / cursory reading of the article: 1) India as a whole is overpopulated and has a pollution problem. This particular issue is limited to Delhi, however. 2) From the perspective of the magnitude and extreme levels of pollution, this is a seasonal issue whose primary contributor, by a large margin, is farmers burning off their crop stubble after their harvest ends. T…

> This particular issue is limited to Delhi Great write-up! But, this issue is not limited to Delhi; the whole of north India is under severe pollution. Delhi gets highlighted the most because it's the capital of the country.

Yeah that is true I should have been more accurate
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