Stop smoking and you will lower
your chances of getting lung cancer; drink less and more often than not, your
liver will stand the test of time; practice safe sex and hopefully you won't
get AIDS. In a simpler world, simple behavioral changes such as these would
alleviate most of the ailments that plague our existence. But what do we do
when the very air we breathe will kill us if we're exposed to it long enough?
Where do we run? Air pollution is a difficult problem to solve for several
reasons:
We've caught on very late in the
game. In the times of the London smog, during the boom of the industrial
revolution, we were none the wiser to the price we pay for
"progress". All we saw were bigger engines, and faster cars; bigger
buildings and huge clouds of smoke signifying the fruits of our labor as we
inched towards the modern era. It has taken several years for global warming
and its causes to become a mainstay in our media and research, and despite the
overwhelming evidence of global warming out there, we still have several
skeptics. And unfortunately, some of these skeptics are tax payers and legislators,
who are serious impediments to the mission to create policy that can protect
our world.
The negative consequences of the
pollution problem are experienced disproportionately around the world, hence it
has been difficult to prioritize attempts to abate the issue. For example, per the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the United States is the
largest source of global warming pollution- emitting more carbon dioxide than
China, Japan, and India combined. However, the crux of extreme global warming
effects are being experienced outside the borders of the United States, like the scorching heat waves in India earlier
this year. As polar bears lose their homes in the polar regions of the planet, or people's
houses get wrecked by floods in Asia, others burn fossil fuels and manufacture
cars with in-built software to cheat on emissions tests (yes Volkswagen, I'm
talking to you). We willfully suspend our concern for these tragedies and our
roll in them only until we have to tweet #PrayForCountryX, or until we have an
excuse to go serve overseas, whenever
our guilt and compassion meet opportunity.
How can we get ahead of this trend?
Who polices the police of global greenhouse gas emissions? Should some
countries start demanding reparations from the developed countries that produce
much more emissions? Also, have we really failed to engineer and distribute clean
energy? Or are we simply complacent? Or are our hands tied by the powers that
be-the large corporations with lots of money that continue to benefit from
burning coal fuels and other activities that are harmful to our environment?
This issue is reminiscent of the battle that raged on over the banishment of
the usage of lead in gasoline for cars
in the 1980s. I hope the implementation and translation into policy of the
scientific evidence available now can result in swifter action to preserve
Mother Earth.
