www.monbiot.com, part 2your_own_warNovember 3 2005, 03:37:15 UTC
That the decline in some forms of pollution has - despite technological advances - stopped points to a series of staggering regulatory failures. The most immediate one has recently been uncovered by researchers at Oxford Brookes University. They found that the government tests designed to ensure that catalytic converters work properly are hopeless. In the laboratory, the converter in a modern car conforming to the latest regulations appears to have an efficiency of more than 99%. In the real world this falls to 72-75% (10). It looks as if the manufacturers are designing their cars to respond to the peculiarities of the government test, rather than to reduce emissions on the road.
While enforcement is feeble, the tough rules the European Union once proposed have been nobbled by the manufacturers. The new strategy the Commission published in September consists of asking them sweetly to stop killing our frail citizens, rather than imposing a legal obligation to keep reducing the quantity of fine soot particles their vehicles produce(11). It grants governments like ours - which have done as little as they can get away with - five years in which to sit on their backsides and make excuses.
But even with all this mollycoddling, we still can't meet the rules. This year the UK has somehow contrived to break the pathetic standards (a maximum of 35 days on which pollution can exceed the legal limit) that the European Union currently imposes. The problem appears to be that the growth in traffic has caught up with the improvement in the performance of engines. The government has been arguing that to do something about this would not be "cost effective". But as the National Society for Clean Air points out, if it had acted when it had to, the rules would have cost far less(12). The idea that laws can be broken when it makes financial sense has interesting implications for the criminal justice system.
As a cyclist, these failures drive me beserk. I refuse to own a car, partly because I believe it is wrong to fill other people's lungs with carcinogens. And so, while the drivers breathe their filtered air, I have to sit behind their tailpipes, drawing their excretions - for I am exerting myself - deep into my chest.
The Routemasters being dragged - to incomprehensible public dismay - off the streets of London do not die. Their tops are cut off, then their headless wights are sent to my home city - Oxford - with the sole and certain purpose of making our lives hell. Carrying two or three half-frozen tourists at a time, they trundle round and round the centre on endless guided tours. To judge by the smoke that comes out of their rear ends they seem to run on burning tyres rather than diesel, but the council's environmental health department, engaged in lively competition with the planning department to establish the outer limits of uselessness, refuses to return my calls, so I have no idea why they are still allowed to operate.
At least the bar staff can, though perhaps at the cost of unemployment, withdraw their labour from the cancer market, but what choice do I have, or does anyone have, short of living in an oxygen tent? Why, in this age of particulate filters and hypercars, do I have to fill my lungs with every known species of airborne fug whenever I go to buy a pint of milk? Is it so hard for a government which seems determined to offend the entire voting public with its assaults on schools and hospitals to stand up to a handful of motor manufacturers who no longer even operate here? Or must we believe that public health in the United Kingdom takes second place to the profits of foreign corporations?
While enforcement is feeble, the tough rules the European Union once proposed have been nobbled by the manufacturers. The new strategy the Commission published in September consists of asking them sweetly to stop killing our frail citizens, rather than imposing a legal obligation to keep reducing the quantity of fine soot particles their vehicles produce(11). It grants governments like ours - which have done as little as they can get away with - five years in which to sit on their backsides and make excuses.
But even with all this mollycoddling, we still can't meet the rules. This year the UK has somehow contrived to break the pathetic standards (a maximum of 35 days on which pollution can exceed the legal limit) that the European Union currently imposes. The problem
appears to be that the growth in traffic has caught up with the improvement in the performance of engines. The government has been arguing that to do something about this would not be "cost effective". But as the National Society for Clean Air points out, if it had acted when it had to, the rules would have cost far less(12). The idea that laws can be broken when it makes financial sense has interesting implications for the criminal justice system.
As a cyclist, these failures drive me beserk. I refuse to own a car, partly because I believe it is wrong to fill other people's lungs with carcinogens. And so, while the drivers breathe their filtered air, I have to sit behind their tailpipes, drawing their
excretions - for I am exerting myself - deep into my chest.
The Routemasters being dragged - to incomprehensible public dismay - off the streets of London do not die. Their tops are cut off, then their headless wights are sent to my home city - Oxford - with the sole and certain purpose of making our lives hell. Carrying two or three half-frozen tourists at a time, they trundle round and round the
centre on endless guided tours. To judge by the smoke that comes out of their rear ends they seem to run on burning tyres rather than diesel, but the council's environmental health department, engaged in lively competition with the planning department to establish the outer limits of uselessness, refuses to return my calls, so I have no idea why they are still allowed to operate.
At least the bar staff can, though perhaps at the cost of unemployment, withdraw their labour from the cancer market, but what choice do I have, or does anyone have, short of living in an oxygen tent? Why, in this age of particulate filters and hypercars, do I have to fill my lungs with every known species of airborne fug whenever I go to buy a pint of milk? Is it so hard for a government which seems determined to offend the entire voting public with its assaults on schools and hospitals to stand up to a handful of motor manufacturers who no longer even operate here? Or must we believe that public health
in the United Kingdom takes second place to the profits of foreign corporations?
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