....of Delhi that is
This is why our new found success is coming at a tremendous cost. I remember when I was in Delhi even in the late 80's and early 90's the pollution was starting to get bad BUT the explosion in the number of automobiles is now a serious health concern. They say that Delhi has more cars than ALL other metros put together (or it used to be true a few years ago)
I thought at one point Delhi was ahead of curve when they mandated the use of CNG for all commercial vehicles BUT it seems like the mindless and uncontrolled growth has left all those gains meaningless.
I havent been to India in a few years but over the last 7-8 years the fog related delays in delhi have become constant. It never used to be so.
Bigger question is, do we really have to emulate America in the kind of growth that will eventually kill us? Should there be some controls in the naked consumerism that we are blindly copying over from the west? Should we force our govt to think different?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/printedition/monday/chi-pollution_nov19,0,3353168.storyNew Delhi choking on its successRising car use voids past emission strides
By Laurie Goering | Tribune foreign correspondent
November 19, 2007
NEW DELHI - This capital city's air is always smoggy around Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. This month, revelers explode hundreds of thousands of pounds of fireworks around the city, filling the air with a nearly unbreathable pall of smoke.
Families trying to deliver festive gifts to friends and relatives sit for hours in the worst traffic jams of the year; a trip that normally takes 10 minutes stretches to three hours or more.
But this year, the Diwali pall appears set to linger. After years of improvement, air quality in New Delhi is slipping precipitously as nearly 1,000 more cars a day hit the city's roads.
As wealth rises in the country, Indians are buying cars at an unprecedented pace. From 2001 to 2006, production rose 300 percent, and last year 4.8 million new cars were registered.
In New Delhi, 963 new vehicles nose onto jammed streets each day, up from 500 a day in 2001, according to the Center for Science and Environment, an Indian non-profit group.
That rate of growth is expected to dramatically speed up next year, when carmakers begin introducing budget models expected to sell for about $2,000, putting an automobile within the reach of millions more Indians.
"We have not yet worked out what impact that will have," said S.D. Makhijani, laboratory director of the government's Central Pollution Control Board. Government estimates of rising pollution levels, he said, are based on the number of vehicles on New Delhi's streets rising at a consistent level through 2010, something that is now unlikely.
Gains blow away
Until recently, New Delhi, one of the world's most polluted cities, had been making significant strides in cleaning up its choking air. Since 2002, the city's aging buses and its fleets of motorized rickshaws have been required to run on compressed natural gas, which emits fewer pollutants than diesel or gasoline.
City officials in recent years also have pushed to dramatically expand the subway system, capped the number of motorized rickshaws, required cleaner-burning fuels and forced all new light commercial vehicles to run on compressed natural gas.
By 2005, those measures had dropped levels of breathable particulate matter, a fine dust that contributes to asthma and lung cancer, by nearly 20 percent in the capital. That raised hopes that New Delhi's persistent winter smog might be easing.
But last year, pollution levels began rocketing upward. This winter, growing pollution is expected to erase all the gains of the anti-pollution campaign that started in 2002.
"We will have to take tough measures to control growing air pollution, and fast," said Sunita Narain, director of the Center for Science and Environment. "Otherwise Delhi will find itself in the choked and toxic haze of pre-compressed natural gas days."
Experts attribute much of the problem to the growing popularity of diesel cars, which use slightly cheaper fuel than their gasoline equivalents. They now account for 30 percent of all passenger cars on the road, up from 2 percent in 2001. Manufacturers that are promoting them predict the vehicles will be 50 percent of the market by 2010.
A byproduct of boom
Diesel cars burn cleaner than they once did, experts agree. But the government still allows them to emit higher levels of the toxic dust that is New Delhi's particular problem. That's evident at the city's hospitals, where doctors report a 15 percent surge in asthma this year.
New Delhi's problem is hardly unique. As both India and China enjoy surging economic growth, more and more of their people, who aspire to the same comforts the developed world enjoys, are buying cars and appliances such as air conditioners. Those things contribute not only to local air pollution -- Beijing now has the worst air of any major capital -- but to surging growth in atmospheric greenhouse gases, which drive climate change worldwide.
China is poised to surpass the United States as the world's biggest greenhouse gas producer by 2010, and possibly within as little as a year, scientist say.
New Delhi's pollution is worst in winter, when falling temperatures and calming winds trap noxious air closer to the ground, Makhijani said. The pollution, which combines with winter fog, regularly shuts the city's airport for hours at a time and leaves legions of residents with lingering coughs.
India has committed itself to meeting World Health Organization air quality standards by 2012 in all its major cities. But with levels of toxic dust now 4.6 times above the country's safety standards on the worst winter days, including Diwali, that seems unlikely, researchers say.
A rush to public transportation is unlikely, analysts say, as long as new cars keep getting cheaper and India's government maintains price controls that ensure a steady supply of cheap gasoline and diesel.
AuthorTopic: There is something dirty in the air (Read 525 times)
March 03, 2006, 12:38:52 AM