Clean air

Now here's a topic that makes me hot under the collar. The irony that we all shove air conditioning units on full blast when it gets slighly warm, consuming all that extra energy when we should know that this is going to contribute to global warming. Then the sheer bloody-minded short sightedness of seeing car use in isolation of every other aspect of society, especially health.

Pollution causes complete misery to millions of people every year and even fatalities. It contributes to and even causes a plethora of diseases (consider hay fever, asthma and other allergic conditions). Of course this is good news for the drug companies as they can pump us full of steroids and anti-histamines, a very lucrative trade. It is bad news for the rest of us though, especially the people who have to live in areas of bad air quality.

Why do the bodies charged with the regulation of transport fail to take control of the situation?

• The health and transport departments don't work together
• Lack of funding for the types of research that would prove that pollution needs to be cut for health reasons
• Lack of funding the proves the cost to individuals and the economy of dealing with the health issues and not the pollution issues
• Corrupt politicians making money out of the transport industries
• Stupid politicians maintaining mantras like more roads = economic growth
• Hypocritical people who drive everywhere but demand cleaner air
  
• Unfortunate people who are so asthmatic they can't walk or cycle around

So what can we do?

• We have to cut the emissions caused by vehicles, it is that simple
• The reduction needs to be proportional to air quality, no other metric is relevant. We should ignore bogus political arguments that try to skew the real debate
• We should only allow pollution that is necessary i.e. disabled access. Private access to cities is entirely replaced by clean, efficient public transport, bikes and walking.
• We should stop forcing people to travel. Many people could work from home for instance, managers should be more secure in themselves and realise they don't need to drag their employees into an office to make them feel in control
• Public organisations, especially those regulating tranport should set the lead
• Its not about just personal tranport but infact mostly about the transport of good, we need to cut our consumption to reduce the need to move around so much stuff.
  
• The public transport and haulage industries should lead in using the most efficient and clean vehicles

Last, just a reflection, this blog reminds me why I write this blog and probably why most people write blogs of this type: we feel powerless to change things and the people in charge, those with the Bush Syndrome seem to be driving us all in the wrong direction (excuse the pun).