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Indian Capital Declares Emergency as Toxic Smog Thickens By the Hour (reuters.com)

New Delhi, the Indian capital declared a pollution emergency on Thursday as toxic smog hung over the city for a third day and air quality worsened by the hour. From a report: Illegal crop burning in the farm states surrounding New Delhi, vehicle exhaust emissions in a city with limited public transport and swirling construction dust have caused the crisis, which arises every year. The problem has been compounded this year by still conditions, the weather office said. A U.S. embassy measure of tiny particulate matter PM 2.5 showed a reading of 608 at 10 a.m. when the safe limit is 25. An hour before it was 591.

22 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. And the worst part is... by Type44Q · · Score: 2, Funny

    And the worst part is that it didn't even smell like samosas.

  2. Re:Karma by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wrong logic -- if India were cleaner and safer, maybe its residents wouldn't be seeking as many opportunities abroad.

  3. to put this into better perspective by nimbius · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Downtown Los Angeles air quality (PM2.5) is only 54 currently. 600 is practically thick enough to stand on.

    --
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    1. Re:to put this into better perspective by Ranbot · · Score: 5, Informative

      And little more perspective... This incident in India is similar to the 1948 Donora Smog event in Donora, PA, where steel factory air pollution and an unusual weather event created a smog that over the town that sickened thousands and killed 20 people. It was one of the key events that triggered the clean air movement in the US and eventually led to the Clean Air Act. https://www.sites.google.com/s...

  4. Moar clean energy by jaredm1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    India definitely needs to invest more in cleaner energy. Population densities mean that the masses owning a combustion powered vehicle like in Europe & the US will have a greater impact. China realised this (better late than never) and are at least taking steps to clean up their cities. India needs to follow. I find it amusing that JLR (owned by an Indian company) are making their first electric car an SUV. If it were me, I'd also have been making an electric mini-car and electric motorcycle targeted at developing economies.

    1. Re:Moar clean energy by mspohr · · Score: 4, Interesting

      China does have a large campaign to install solar energy and move to electric cars.
      https://qz.com/1072643/electri...
      Recently, India’s road transport minister Nitin Gadkari quite bluntly made the government’s intentions clear. “We should move towards alternative fuelI am going to do this, whether you like it or not,” Gadkari told India’s automobile lobby group, SIAM, on Sept. 07. “And I am not going to ask you. I will bulldoze it.”

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      Solar power in India is a fast developing industry. As of September, 2017 the country's solar grid had a cumulative capacity of 14.77 GW.[1] India quadrupled its solar-generation capacity from 2,650 MW on 26 May 2014 to 12,289 MW on 31 March 2017. The country added 3.01 GW of solar capacity in 2015-2016 and 5.525 GW in 2016-2017, the highest of any year, with the average current price of solar electricity dropping to 18% below the average price of its coal-fired counterpart.
      India's initiative of 100 GW of solar energy by 2022 is an ambitious target, since the world's installed solar-power capacity in 2017 is expected to be 303 GW.

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  5. Re:Karma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If it were cleaner and safer, it wouldn't be as cheap. That's why it costs a lot to do business in the U.S.

  6. Use AI to escape from smog by ickleberry · · Score: 4, Funny

    Surely there is an AI-Based app that will let them escape the Smog. AI and Apps are the answer to everything now.

  7. Re:Hey India by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ever think of lowering your population

    The path to lower birthrates is well-understood. Reducing poverty, empowering women, and delivering education (particularly to girls) - Alongside sex education and birth control - All reduce birthrates. India is working hard on that, but it's a long road.

    You even see it in the USA, where the birthrate in Massachusetts is lower than the birth rate in Mississippi - For exactly those reasons.

  8. Re:All teary-eyed for them. by bluegutang · · Score: 2

    You have no sympathy for the rapists, that's fine, but what about sympathy for their victims? Not to mention the kids, who may shit in the street, but they're still kids.

  9. Re:Karma by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

    What % of the new wealth gets sucked up by the corruption?

    It's not zero anywhere, but I doubt it's much higher than India anywhere on Earth.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  10. can't follow rules if you live in India by supernova87a · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The problem isn't smog. It's that the Indian system of government + their citizens' learned behavior in such a system makes the country ungovernable, and so it's impossible to get people to follow rules.

    It's a societal problem, and note I didn't say that Indian people are the problem. Take Indian people out of India and here in the US, they follow rules.

    The problem is when enough people don't follow rules in a country, the otherwise-willing rest give up and say, "why should I follow the rules?"

    Sometimes, democracy isn't great, and you need a little bit of authoritarianism...

    1. Re:can't follow rules if you live in India by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sometimes, democracy isn't great, and you need a little bit of authoritarianism...

      As a person who has been to India many times, I agree with most everything you say--but would like to comment that I don't agree democracy isn the problem, people will vote for good politicians and laws.

      As you said, it's a society that turns their eyes on those who don't follow those laws that is the problem.

      It's like a child that is well behaved for their friends' parents, but at home with their own parents they are disobedient... they have learned that they can get away with nearly anything and so they do, and the parents at some point become ineffective at discipline.

      I believe America has the same issue in some places where there are strict laws on the books but are selectively enforced--when that happens you have a system that become corrupt because now the ones who should be enforcing the law become de facto prosecution and judgement.

    2. Re:can't follow rules if you live in India by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A great example of laws that are ignored in North America are bylaws/city ordinances. Every city has unbelievable piles of these, to the point that I can't find anyone on my street without a violation.

      Since the laws are written to make things feel good/look good, they are consistently ignored except by quacks who want to start a feud with neighbours by calling the city and having the laws enforced against a particular person. For an example in my city, the books say you can't park on the street for longer than 3 hours ANYWHERE.

      Of course, in residential areas, people have friends over and they will park on the street for the day. This bothers nobody as the streets are plenty wide enough for it.

      If you own a home in a city, go ahead and look at the codes. I guarantee if you look hard enough you will find one you're violating. Perhaps your fence is an inch too tall, your car parked with a wheel slightly on the grass, maybe you left your bike beside the fence despite property setbacks? Or that $599 tiny shed you got from Home Depot actually needed a permit. Is your driveway wide enough or long enough? Do you have a planter on the corner to stop people cutting through your lawn? Did you make even the slightest sound outside at any time? Let your kids sleep in a tent in the backyard one night? Hung a clothesline to your house? And so on...

      I know those stupid rules well because I have a quack neighbour who likes to call the city. Fun fact: You can make your home a total eyesore and pass the cities rules if you read them well enough (turns out I can put swingsets and other children's playtoys all over my front yard, only took one night to move them from the backyard, more convenient to make sure nobody gets hurt to boot!). I should know, that was my passive aggressive way of getting that neighbour to quit calling the city. :P

  11. Re:Karma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is fake news. Trump has committed to using 100% solar energy within 5 years. This will create new jobs in the US as we build massive quantities of new solar panels.

    The only downside is that his proposal is to burn the new solar panels instead of burning coal.

  12. Burning fields [Re:Moar clean energy] by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 3, Informative

    India definitely needs to invest more in cleaner energy.

    I agree, but I will point out that the pollution in question comes from burning fields, not from energy production or transportation.

    http://indianexpress.com/article/india/stubble-burning-punjab-farmers-amarinder-singh-ngt-air-pollution-4897240/

      http://www.dw.com/en/burning-fields-in-punjab/av-41233497

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    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  13. Easy Solution... to the Wrong Problem by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No, I'm serious. Replace all parking lanes on arterials with barrier-separated bicycle and transit lanes. Destroy all vehicles other than public transit and bicycles using those lanes. Problem solved.

    And that will solve the problem of pollution caused by burning agricultural waste in the fields how, exactly?

    see: "Farmers’ Unchecked Crop Burning Fuels India’s Air Pollution"

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    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  14. Did they try fixing it? by TimothyHollins · · Score: 2

    Did they call tech support? Did they try turning it off and on again?

  15. Re:When public transportation = diesel busses by kamapuaa · · Score: 2

    All the empty buses in Indian would be a huge problem if such a thing actually existed. Driver salaries are not high. Taxis are everywhere.

    Why are you posting on a subject you clearly know absolutely nothing about?

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  16. Re:Karma by MoaDweeb · · Score: 4, Informative

    According to Transparency international's Corruption Perception Index, India is fairly corrupt.
    It is at 79th place with a score of 40 (equal with China). By comparison US is 18th - score 74 (just ahead of Ireland).

    The least corrupt are New Zealand & Denmark with a score of 90.
    Most corrupt is North Korea at 176th and a score of 8.

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  17. This is not surprising. by DaMattster · · Score: 2

    I recently saw a documentary about India's energy issues. It turns out that in many of the major cities, the power grid is so unstable that businesses depend upon the almost daily use of backup generators. These backup generators are, of course, fossil-fueled. Imagine several thousand diesel generators running on top of the daily traffic and it is easy to see why air pollution is a significant problem.

  18. Re:Hey India by morethanapapercert · · Score: 2
    Only if said chemicals affected fertility. Some better metrics to look at would be incidence of birth defects. For high levels of oestrogens and related hormone chemicals, the rate of intersex births would be of particular value. Also look at average IQ for people born in that state compared to people of similar socio-economic brackets in states with cleaner waters. (among other things, stupid people tend to breed at earlier ages and in greater numbers, This depends on a number of factors, but then there are a number of factors which derive from this as well.) What are the cancer rates like? Especially GI, kidney and liver cancers.

    Surprisingly, another metric is murder and other violent crime rates. There is evidence to suggest that the elimination of lead in paint and gasoline caused or contributed to a huge drop in violent crimes in the late 70's and 80's.

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