Thank you for smoking!

Nope, this is not about the cigarette industry.

It is about people who smoke without actually smoking.  Yep, without lighting up a cigarette, people smoke about two packs every single day.  Adults, children. Everybody.

On Tuesday, levels of the most dangerous air particles, called PM 2.5, reached more than 700 micrograms per cubic meter in parts of the city, according to data from the United States Embassy. Experts say that prolonged exposure to such high concentrations of PM 2.5 is equivalent to smoking more than two packs of cigarettes a day.

The smog in Delhi is so intense that breathing that air throughout the day is the equivalent of smoking more than two packs of cigarettes!

While in many contexts I metaphorically write about puking, kids and adults are literally throwing up because of this atrocious conditions:

Manish Sisodia, the deputy chief minister of Delhi State, said he was driving to a meeting Wednesday morning when he passed a school bus and saw two children throwing up out of the window. “That was shocking for me,” he said. “I immediately told my officers to pass the order to close all the schools.”

Schools closed for a week.  But, what are the kids going to do?  Their homes don't filter out all the crap.  Further, they will end up playing outside.

The situation prompted the state’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, to say on Twitter: “Delhi has become a gas chamber. Every year this happens during this part of year."

A gas chamber!

Pollution kills. It kills way more than the notorious tobacco industry can ever kill.  “Pollution has not received nearly as much attention as climate change, or Aids or malaria – it is the most underrated health problem in the world."

Pollution kills at least nine million people and costs trillions of dollars every year, according to the most comprehensive global analysis to date, which warns the crisis “threatens the continuing survival of human societies”.
...
The vast majority of the pollution deaths occur in poorer nations and in some, such as India, Chad and Madagascar, pollution causes a quarter of all deaths. The international researchers said this burden is a hugely expensive drag on developing economies. 

People, especially those in India, need to ask themselves whether such a "development" of a country is worth all the physical and emotional toll.

China: not a competitor, but a wheezing emphysema patient

What my post couldn't convey, Jon Stewart explains.

Oh, with the help of Neil deGrasse Tyson too!

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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"Delhi was smoggy" is a dog-bites-man story

In preparing for the trip to India, I had packed a couple of long-sleeve t-shirts, two sweaters, and even a beanie, because I knew I would be traveling to places in India that would be a lot cooler than Chennai.

Perhaps even to the Himalayan foothills. Or to the hilly northeast.

I didn't go anywhere near the northeast, and not quite near the Himalayas either.  But, I did end up at places where the overnight low was nine celsius, one of the nights I was in Delhi.  A few days before I was there, and later too, the lows dipped all the way down to 5C (about 40F.)

Those of us who can afford to, well, we wear warm clothes and stay in heated rooms.  But, others who cannot?  Especially the ones who live in slums or out on the streets?

I would imagine that the guy sitting by a smoky fire to warm himself up was not an unusual sight at all.  I saw him at about five in the evening.  Thanks to living in Oregon, I have become so much used to cooler temperatures that I was walking around with a pair of jeans and a short-sleeve t-shirt on, which invited a lot of strange looks.

But, at five in the evening, it felt like the temperature was perhaps about 60F (15C) and this was quite comfy to walk around. By nine, when I stepped out, I had a second layer of a longer-sleeve t-shirt also on.

I can imagine life to be tough for those on the streets as it cools down.  Which is why this older man was sitting by a fire at five in the evening.  The morning earlier, at about eight, as I was walking through the narrow streets towards the Jama Masjid I saw many numbers of men--yes, only men--sitting in groups around fires right by the roadside, holding their palms over the flames.

Everyday life is tough when poor.

With such fires, all the auto exhaust, industrial pollution, ... should we be surprised then the Delhi sky was so smoggy that my throat was always itchy and I had to take anti-histamines?

I was reminded of the inverted "U" curve: the environmental quality seems to deteriorate as a country's economic growth and development takes off, and then begins to improve at a later stage.

So, we can only hope that India, and the poor Indians in particular, will get rich soon.

President Obama continues with Bush's "clean skies" policies :(

First came this email from Frances Beinecke, who is the President of Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC,) in which she writes "President Obama just threw you overboard:"

President Obama just dropped us like a hot potato.

It happened on Friday, without warning, when the President cozied up to America’s biggest polluters and killed life-saving ozone smog rules that his EPA has been working on diligently for years.

What stings almost as badly as the smog is this: the White House reached into the George W. Bush playbook by delivering this slap in the face on the eve of a holiday weekend -- clearly hoping that all would be forgotten by Tuesday morning.

Sorry, Mr. President. That’s not going to happen.

That was time-stamped 10:13 am on September 6th.  While I am no environment ideologue, I have been following NRDC ever since my graduate school days.  After completing my dissertation, I even interviewed for a position at their Los Angeles office.  But, I suppose it was clear to them that as much as I am sensitive to the impacts on the natural environment, I wouldn't make a religion out of environmental issues :)

Some time later, I signed up for email alerts from them, which is how I got the email from NRDC.  Anyway, a day after that email came another one:

We raised an outcry yesterday that lit up the White House switchboard all day long! Thousands of you are still trying to get through. With the President’s Thursday speech fast approaching, I want to be sure you get heard at the White House.

I agree with NRDC on this one.  Barack O'Bush wimped out, yet again :(

The Economist notes:

Polluters are cock-a-hoop—and so are the Republicans, who have become ever less verdant since the recession began. Many think that the EPA is a left-wing wrecking operation and Mr Obama’s hitherto willingness to approve its edicts characteristic of his job-killing attachment to unnecessary regulation. Besides American lungs, this ignores a few things: that the CAA was beefed up under a Republican president (Nixon); that the EPA is bound not to factor economic costs into its rulings on the CAA; and that those rulings so far approved under Mr Obama were mostly demanded by the courts, to clear up the mess made of America’s environmental regulation by Mr Bush.
Yet at least Republicans are bound to beat up Mr Obama. The scorn that greens, who are mostly Democrat, increasingly show him is a bigger threat to his re-election hopes. They cite a pattern of presidential retreat on big environmental issues, including a perceived friendliness towards the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, that would ferry Canadian crude-oil almost the length of America. Far worse, following Congress’s rejection of a cap-and-trade scheme last year, is Mr Obama’s failure to do anything much to combat climate change. By September 30th the EPA is due to propose limits on greenhouse-gas emissions for power stations. Whether green enthusiasm for Mr Obama can be reactivated—as those legal challenges to the permitted ozone limit soon will be—will depend upon his response.

When will the Republicans ever understand that Obama is one heck of a competent Republican president? As the joke goes, I hope that after winning re-election, Obama will switch parties and become a Democrat :)

As for the greens, well, Obama knows all too well that they would rather vote for him dragging their feet than vote for the likes of Rick Perry.  So, why care for the green votes, right?