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India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

bbc.com

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Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#41

Post by icegreentea2 »

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?

I get your point - it's obviously easier to solve the problem (at least if you want to act ethically) by improving infrastructure.

But that also has the risk of trivializing the problem. Improve infrastructure is hard, especially in a compromised system.

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#42

Post by Jedd »

paulsutter wrote: post #20
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…

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...

> South Korea and Taiwan have higher population density than India ...

This is disingenuous.

Australia has an astonishingly low population density (3.1 people / square kilometre) however it has about the same volume of arable land as France and most of that land is poorer (soil, nutrient) quality, and has a lot lower rainfall and is prone to more severe weather events ... etc.

Assessing or comparing population density based purely on people / sq km is wildly misleading. Rather, it's a matter of carrying capacity of the land, which is what I presume GP was referring to.

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#43

Post by umvi »

throwaway8941 wrote: post #2

I have a ready solution to all their problems. They should simply do what we did in Kazakhstan a couple of years ago: raise the maximum permissible exposure levels by an order of magnitude and declare all of the previously extremely polluted areas as safe. I am not sure it made the air look any different, or had any effect on my chronic bronchitis, but at least the air pollution indicators look nice: they are now per…

That's what I do with my code coverage reports. I just exclude any file that isn't covered from the report and the report turns green and all the managers are happy because it proves the code is of high quality.

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#44

Post by jangid »

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…

"night blindness" or "night vision"?

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#45

Post by _iyig »

BurningFrog wrote: post #26
CamelCaseName wrote: post #3

Tangent: Does anyone know if/how the human impact of planting trees is measured? What I mean is, what metrics determine the "quality" of a tree plant? I assume this can vary greatly based on location and type of tree planted. I often see impact quantified by CO2 removed from the environment, but what about the impact on people nearby? Would it be better to plant 100 trees in the center of New Delhi, where the air is…

Trees might as best smell nice and provide shade. They do nothing to purify air.

Seems like it’s a bit more complicated than that:

“The relationship between trees and air pollution is a complicated one. Particulate matter suspended in polluted air tends to settle onto leaves, and certain gases including nitrous dioxide (NO₂) are absorbed by leaves’ stomata, filtering the air and reducing pollution levels slightly.

But trees and other vegetation also restrict airflow in their immediate vicinity, preventing pollution from being diluted by currents of cleaner air. In particular, tall trees with thick canopies planted alongside busy roads can act like a roof, trapping pockets of polluted air at ground level. To reliably improve air quality, city planners need to give careful consideration to how trees are placed.”

https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/do-trees-reduce-ai...

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#46

Post by Consultant32452 »

throwawaysea wrote: post #22

I don’t see how we can address resource consumption and pollution more broadly without population controls. We need a two child, replacement rate rule. Otherwise we will continually play whack a mole with patching symptoms and bickering politics. And yet no one wants to own up to this reality.

Two child policies aren't necessary, as populations become more educated and wealthy they naturally have fewer children. This is already taking place. So we just need to keep spreading democracy and education, especially of women.

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#47

Post by BurningFrog »

Peckingjay wrote: post #30
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.

And a lot poorer overall, which certainly doesn't help. GDP(PPP) per capita for India was 7874 in 2018. Versus 41351, 44227 and 53023 for South Korea, Japan and Taiwan respectively. These countries that manage their high population density pretty well are also much smaller (Japan is around 10 times smaller than India) and it is much easier to optimize/organize on a smaller scale.

The way I think of it, India's pollution and poverty are both caused by their society not organized well.

I believe South Korea was poorer than India in living memory!

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#48

Post by coldtea »

Jedd wrote: post #42
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...

> South Korea and Taiwan have higher population density than India ... This is disingenuous. Australia has an astonishingly low population density (3.1 people / square kilometre) however it has about the same volume of arable land as France and most of that land is poorer (soil, nutrient) quality, and has a lot lower rainfall and is prone to more severe weather events ... etc. Assessing or comparing population densit…

We're talking about Delhi here, not all of India.

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#49

Post by BurningFrog »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #41
whatshisface wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I get your point - it's obviously easier to solve the problem (at least if you want to act ethically) by improving infrastructure. But that also has the risk of trivializing the problem. Improve infrastructure is hard, especially in a compromised system.

Genocide (which I assume is the "unethical" option) is also hard, and tends to destroy infrastructure as well...

I do agree that improving governance is much, much easier said than done. And to be fair, India has had substantial progress.

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#50

Post by inapis »

muktabh wrote: post #13
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #6

> A major factor behind the high pollution levels at this time of year is farmers in neighbouring states burning crop stubble to clear their fields What is the obstacle to fining these farmers? (Most agricultural systems have moved past burning stubble.) Do the farmers form a blocking bloc? Or are there other factors at play.

Farmers are financially not that well off and a big share of population in India is farmers. There is already provision of prosecuting farmers in law, but no administration wants to punish the relatively poor + electorally important farmers by enforcing the laws.

Punjab and Haryana farmers are by no means poor farmers.
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