> Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution?

In the UK at least, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) is a powerful lobby group. Car sales are used as a key economic indicator. Cars have long been seen as aspirational and a measure of personal success. Cars support other sectors of the economy such as civil engineering (roads, bridges), petroleum sales and car accessories, parts and repairs..

Cycling and walking on the other hand? Not so much, despite the many benefits. Just recently, there has been a move in some areas to introduce low-traffic neighbourhoods and create more cycle-ways. The hoo-ha has been deafening. It causes congestion, it blocks emergency vehicles, it increases air pollution because cars are at a standstill. (According to critics.) Newspapers have been running stories about how evil and undemocratic this is, and dear old Nigel Farage seems to have re-invented himself as an anti-cycling campaigner.

I don't think there's an actual conspiracy - there usually isn't. But the status quo serves the interests of some powerful and wealthy groups, and it takes a strong-willed government to overrule them. They'd rather hand-wave about meeting 'green' targets by 2060, and meantime hope that electric vehicles arrive in sufficient numbers to eliminate or ameliorate the problem. The alternatives cause so much political friction that they seem impossible to implement, at least without more courage than our politicians are used to showing.

Indeed. What's really crazy is how the "anti" side has managed to claim to be the side of the working class, fighting against a "green liberal elite". This trope is incredibly harmful; the poor don't even own cars in London, yet breathe the most polluted air.

And immediately anyone mentions restricting traffic, they're all about the disabled, older people, ambulances and essential deliveries, when really all they seem to want is to drive their cars as often and far as they like, without restrictions. It really is infuriating.

Infuriating is right

My partner cannot legally drive DUE to disabilities, improved public transport, walking, cycling etc

Would be massively helpful for us but no car hell on our door step forever

I see the anti-side as more arguing that they're middle class. People wealthy enough to afford to not bicycle or take the bus, but of modest enough means that taxes can mean putting car ownership out of reach. The "Liberal elite" is putting a very manageable burden on the rich, actively promoting means of transit that help the poor, and is expecting the middle class to just suffer through the requisite sacrifices. It's a compelling narrative so long as you don't expect to live another 50 years in which case it's a rather dense one becuase you will actually have to pay the interest on your choices today.

What truly baffles me is people who are anti-immigrarion, anti-migrant, and anti-refugee but also against any form of regulation on carbon emissions. As if they don't quite grasp that if your goal is to reduce migration than environmental policy matters more than even immigration policy.

I don’t follow. No new taxes have been imposed on car owners in London.

I live in Lyon, France and we often have high air pollution warnings and you really can feel it in the air.

During lockdown, back in April and May, there was a noticeable difference in the air quality. It felt different. When we went out for a walk you could also tell the difference in noise pollution from there being so few cars on the roads. It was lovely.

There is a church nearby that we can sometimes hear when the bells ring on the hour at night but during lockdown we could hear them during the day. My wife commented back then how she knew when the area had "returned to normal" as she could no longer hear the church bells when she had lunch in the garden.

I am not trying to undervalue your problems, but I suggest looking at some third world countries for some perspective. I live in one such place. In winter (which lasts for about 8-9 months each year) the air pollution is _horrifyingly_ bad: 250-300 µg/m³ of PM2.5 at day time, and 900-1500 µg/m³ each night. I am not bullshitting you, this is how we live. You can feel the taste of coal on tour tongue in a completely sealed room.

And almost nobody gives a fuck — when you try to discuss it with someone, you either get a blank stare, or "stop exaggerating, it's no so bad" (by which they mean "you don't drop dead right away (unless you're asthmatic)".)

I have visited Mumbai and now have co workers in New Delhi. I had to leave Mumbai after two days because I couldn't stand the air anymore. When I blew my nose it was just black stuff coming out and buy throat was constantly scratchy. And from what I hear it's even worse in New Delhi. I only hope that people will wake up soon and change.

> and buy throat was constantly scratchy

When you're so congested that you even sound congested when you type. (sorry...)

The air pollution is at such a high level that people are dying from it.

I do count myself lucky that I'm not contending with levels in places like Delhi but personally, I don't want people to put it in perspective and conclude that comparatively it's not so bad.

I don't think that is what he is saying. He is saying, no matter how bad things get, people will get used to it.

I was living in China for the last 2.5 years and within that time span the quality of air in Beijing went from absolutely unbearable crossing over the 500 to blue skies almost every day. Probably one too many politician's kids died from lung problems. The other interesting thing in the bad days was how they could turn on a dime. When there was an important political event or international visits the air pollution would magically get better for a few days (coinciding with the international internet and VPN connectivity getting dramatically worse...). They would just shut down all of the factories in the area.

When there's a political will there is definitely a way.

Paris, at least, is doing an amazing job of replacing motor vehicles on the streets with friendlier alternatives, with great results in terms of reduced air and noise pollution. Try to elect a mayor of Lyons who's like Annie Hidalgo?

The traffic in and around Lyon is fucking terrible. They really need to do something to reduce how many cars are on the road.

The thing is overall the metro is decent as is the bus service and they are always full yet there are still so many cars on the road I wonder where all the people come from tbh. There are also lots of alternative options available with Lime e-scooters and Vélo'v bikes all over the place but still what feels like a million cars!

I used to live in London so a lot of traffic isn't new to me but during peak times Lyon is a nightmare so I just avoid it as much as possible.

> I wonder where all the people come from tbh

Public transportation, bikes, scooters are all good for people living in Lyon. I suppose the cars are people living or working outside Lyon.

> Try to elect a mayor of Lyons who's like Annie Hidalgo?

New mayor of Lyon is a member of the Green party.

There were a lot of ecologist mayors (a "green wave" according to the media) at the last municipal elections in France. It's a dividing issue. More and more people are concerned about environmental issues. But at the same time, there is a universal hate for ecologists.

> But at the same time, there is a universal hate for ecologists.

This doesn't seem to be true? Annie Hidalgo won re-election and has pretty decent popularity ratings. Maybe they're hated out in the countryside or whatever, but the actual citizens of the cities run by these "ecologist" mayors do seem to be generally happy with them.

I really wish we had one here in NYC. Only 22% of households in Manhattan where I live even own cars, yet an ungodly amount of the total public space is given over to cars, including two whole lanes of free parking on most blocks. Meanwhile the sidewalks are narrow and often full of trash bags because we can't even put in dumpsters lest some sacred parking spots be removed, and delivery vehicles are constantly double-parked or blocking bike lanes since there's no delivery-only spots.

I think the majority of people here would be in favor of a mayor that de-emphasized cars and got a lot of this traffic off our streets, thus making it more pleasant for people on foot.

Only minority of cars are responsible for majority of pollution.

A single badly maintained diesel car produces as much pollution as thousands of legal new cars.

Same goes for trucks -- the low in air pollution you felt was likely not due to less cars but less trucks (and possibly busses, depending on where in Europe you live)

I don't know why this correct comment got downvoted.

A car without a catalytic converter generates as much toxic pollution as 100 new cars with catalytic converters. A car whose catalytic converter has broken and which has engine trouble produces even more. And diesel produces more than gas. (Though new vehicles of both types are about equal.)

Thus a single badly maintained diesel car can produce as much pollution as thousands of legal new cars. Smog truly is a situation where a tiny majority of vehicles produce the vast majority of the problem.

The problem is that such a comment doesn't help. It's just a pessimistic viewpoint where you have to read the fine print to see that things are better in reality.

"Catalytic converters generate 100 times less toxic pollution. Installing catalytic converters into millions of cars prevented millions of tons of toxic pollution" gets turned into "A single badly maintained diesel car produces as much pollution as thousands of legal new cars."

Why turn a success into a failure? It only serves to make people feel powerless. Being "technically correct" was just a way to masquerade the real message "Don't try, you will fail and when you fail it will undo [0] your success".

[0] only a small part of (this is the fine print)

I strongly disagree.

What the comment points to is that reducing car pollution isn't so much a question of saying we all need to pitch in as one of saying that we need to identify the serious problems and promptly deal with them. It is the kind of thing that is absolutely essential to understand before you have any chance of proposing an effective solution.

This is, for example, why it is common to have regular smog certifications required. And why those certifications do more to reduce smog than, say, telling everyone to drive 20% less would.

I got used to downvotes. There is no rhyme and reason on HN or anywhere else for that matter. Sometimes I think people just downvote to avoid facing the reality.

I understand it is not politically correct to say most cars are not the problem (or at least not the most of it).

In ideal world we would not be driving petrol guzzlers but instead have cars that run on electricity from our own home solar panels.

But the reality is that a well maintained car emits thousands times less harmful stuff than cars from couple decades ago. The new norms that automakers are facing are really crazy restrictive and sometimes hit the very limits of physics and thermodynamics.

The problem is when people get around these rules, drive unmaintained cars, drive cars that are way larger and more powerful than is needed or cheat by removing converters and installing them only for inspection.

Especially the last one. Here in Poland this is practically the norm and people treat this as part of life and feel proud they "saved". Then they complain we have bad air.

While this is true, diesel alone is terrible. The UK should make diesel more expensive.

> Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution?

The Covid frenzy reminds me something that happened in my friend's village.

Four small apartment rooms burned down affecting four people.

The village went into a frenzy of help and concern. They had multiple fundraisers to raise money for the affected. Local news would go to local businesses to film them putting together care packages. People on the street would be interviewed about the disaster where the interviewee would quickly sneak in what they're doing to help the cause. The local news cycle was deep-diving on the history of each affected person to show what a good person they were, and they were filmed receiving all sorts of gifts and comically large charity checks. Facebook feeds are constantly lit up about the disaster and how everyone can pitch in a hand.

Two months later some living quarters burn down killing one and putting twenty people out of a home. But it barely even makes the news and nobody really utters a word over it. The village has already blown its concern load.

We humans have this weird laserbeam of attention, and what it will focus on is a true lottery, and when it focuses on something it ignites it and it burns to a crisp and it gives us our fill for a while, and we ignore everything else.

Having a limited supply of empathy is one way to think about this, but another (less immediately appealing) way is as fast moving moral fashions. In your example it seems like the empathy got ‘used up’, because of the order of those two events, but I think that sort of thing often happens the other way round too, in which cases it’s harder to tell ourselves stories about why. Maybe the best explanation is it’s mostly arbitrary. That’s the problem with relying on public charity and the feel-good factor as a mechanism for helping the worst off. Moral fashions are like weather – somewhat predictable, but not definitely not reliable or consistent.

You also have to take into consideration feedback effects though. COVID-19 would be much worse if people didn’t react to it. There’s also an automatic reaction to it by people which is too slow though as could be seen in Wuhan, Milano and New York.

That is such a fantastic metaphor for our limited 'supply' of care/empathy.

Sometimes it feels as though we have only so much for others' plights before we run out and only have enough to focus on our own. I'm not sure.

this is exactly why permanent, tax-funded, institutional safety nets are necessary. you can't rely on sporadic charity.

The decision-making class can avoid the worst impacts of air pollution, such as by living in nice low density areas, but they can’t buy their way out of danger of Covid infection, so it’s a lot more scary.

The EU has limits for suspended particulate matter, and at least in Germany all the major cities are battling to stay within the thresholds. A few cities ban diesel vehicles in the city, others put expensive air purifiers next to the measuring stations.

People seem to love their cars more than their health, and other measures like modernizing heating don't seem to have much traction.

What I observed in my area is that people are not loving cars more than their health, but they cannot make a difference at a personal level, many don't want to change anything and then people who care stop believing anything can be done and give up. Air pollution is not a fire you can extinguish in 15 minute and move on, it is mass phenomenon with millions of tiny participants, it is the death of the thousand cuts and no individual can change it alone.

If only we had some form of organization which represented the interest of the People, with the authority to decree and enforce statute.

Maybe something where everyone can choose a person with similar values as themselves, and the person that's chosen by the most people will deal with all the details and day-to-day stuff. And it would be good if we had such a thing both for nationwide problems and for local issues, so we can solve problems both locally and on a larger scale.

> others put expensive air purifiers next to the measuring stations.

well ain't that some shit. How is that crap legal??

I would say that our brain is wired to react to direct threats and not long terms ones because the main cause of death was direct threats until not so long ago. And by natural selection, the ones reacting to direct threats survived. This is an hypothesis, I would be interested if there is research done on the subject.

It's much much worse in India. >2M deaths [1] per year, and no one cares. Yet many applauded the stringent lock downs that caused widespread poverty.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/19/india-suffers-...

One of the surprising things from working at home, was how noticeable the pollution was when venturing back into the city for in-office days. Just one poorly maintained diesel 4x4 or an older bus and you can taste the particulates/VOCs in the air.

On the other hand the neighbour's lawnmower would often send clouds of burnt oil through the yard requiring a frantic closing of all windows.

There's a lot of answers to those questions

> 800k yearly premature deaths caused by pollution[0] and still not care at all

The deaths are diffuse and happen all over so there's not a huge panic about it because it's hard to spot. Also 'air pollution' isn't the listed cause of death so people have to make the extra step to link the huge number of knock on effects back to the cause. Even when you do there's a lot of push back from well paid lawyers to argue that there's no direct link between the pollution of their clients and the fact that communities near their factories die 5 years sooner than anyone else.

> covid-19 hasn't caused yet as many deaths but we quickly intervened ... Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution?

COVID is acute and new which means we haven't grown systematically numb to it's effects yet so there's the chance for a very pointed response. Even now though there's people arguing the same line as polluting industries, that the numbers are skewed and people with other conditions didn't die because of COVID but should be listed as dying because of their heart disease/respiratory problems/etc.

It also helps that no one is in the business of COVID and in theory once the vaccine is widely available and COVID is just another occasional background illness things will largely go back to normal. To address pollution on the other hand you have to permanently make whole swaths of industry either vastly more expensive (and therefor less profitable) or practically eliminate them. Those get a lot of push back of course.

I think it's because if we had unhinged covid, the death toll would have been approx %2 or %3 of the population, which could've been 9 to 10 million people in europe.

Sweden has had a lower per-capita COVID deathtoll than European states with heavy lockdowns.

Lockdown South American nations have had about the same COVID toll as non-lockdown nations.

Same when you look at individual US states.

Doesn't seem to be much of a link between lockdowns and COVID - but a heavy link between lockdown and economic and social devastation.

The virus will follow its own seasonal trends, impacted by herd immunity, as every respiratory virus has.

> Sweden has had a lower per-capita COVID deathtoll than European states with heavy lockdowns.

But 5-12 times that of comparable neighboring countries like Norway, Finland and Denmark

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...

And by own admission the strategy failed

https://www.thelocal.se/20201215/what-does-the-first-report-...

The corona commission has not yet made any conclusions regarding whether lockdown or not lockdown was the right decision, that will (maybe) come later. So I don't really know how your article is relevant to that. The government and the independent agencies don't seem to believe that a harsh lockdown is the correct thing to do.

Why do you think the other Nordic countries are the most comparable? Languages are pretty similar, including some cultural similarities. But I would not be confident in saying that those factors are the most relevant to the spread of viruses. In 2018, there was something like 5x more deaths per capita from the flu in Denmark compared to Sweden (~2800 in Denmark and ~1000 in Sweden).

I just feel like you are making your job far too easy by just comparing 4 countries with each other, and claiming that they are all identical except for the different strategy. Especially since differences can have a very non-linear effects.

Quoting from the article

> The report states that the main factor in the problems in residential homes for the elderly was simply the fact the virus spread so widely in society.

With regards to the difference in strategy, there has been analysis like this

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7227592/

Finally, and this is just a common sense argument, I believe it is clear that avoiding social interaction will slow transmission of airborne diseases. And lockdowns decrease social interactions (to a much higher degree than simple recommendations)

Oh, I forgot, when looking at percentage of population over 65 both Sweden and Denmark clock in at ~20%, whereas the population density of Sweden is ~25 people/km^2 and Denmark has one of ~135 people/km^2.

In other words I will argue, that one would expect Denmark to have been hit harder, but there is one fifth the deaths per capita.

And I’m sorry that I am ranting, but this disease has caused so much dead and suffering, when it could have been stopped if we took it seriously - this upsets me. I was talking with a friend living in Taiwan and they’ve had ~750 cases in total with aggressive tracing and isolation tactics, so we know it is possible.

Nobody lives in the vast forests in Sweden. The population density of Denmark would only be 2 people/km^2 if Greenland was included. The urbanization is, however, pretty similar, but Stockholm is still much larger than Copenhagen.

I'm not saying that there are not more similarities between the countries. Both drive on the right side of the road, and have flags with crosses, for example. But you still can't just make a list of similarities and then say that they are identical except for the strategy, since the difference could be something not on your list, including just simple random chance.

The report states that there is a correlation between population spread and the spread in the elderly care. They have not made any comment on how the strategy impacted the population spread. I saw the press conference, I know what they said. They refused to answer any question from journalists regarding the over-all strategy. You should understand articles before posting them.

And Norway's Prime Minister says they acted too harshly: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/30/coronavirus-norw...

You can find news articles that spin anything positively or negatively.

Here is comparison between Sweden and Norway. 'The observed temporary excess mortality likely arises because people in vulnerable groups die weeks or months earlier than they would otherwise, due to the timing and severity of the unusual external event.' https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.11.20229708v...

You want the real reason? Fixing air pollution quickly would disrupt the global economy on a long term scale. Capitalism doesn't like that.

Edit: Y'all so predictable.

The real reason is that people are too poor to care about pollution or those dead people, same as anywhere else in the world. Actually, the poorer the country the less people care about the environment or infections.

It's the same with covid too, it's the government which had to force close the economy.

What makes you think "people" have anything to do with deciding whether to do anything about air pollution? As I mentioned in another comment, no individual without billions of dollars behind them can do anything whatsoever about air pollution. Do you really think even, say, middle class Americans could take on the US government, one of the top 10 greenhouse gas polluters in the world?

Maybe I'm just amplifying your point, but you seem to be blaming people for being poor here, when, in fact, people are being kept poor intentionally by capitalism. It's much easier to control people who have no other options, after all.

When people are poor they don't care about the environment, it's a first world problem.

Without capitalism, the government is very unlikely to create wealth (look at China's PRC which had to embrace state capitalism to make money).

China, the largest polluter in the world, is an interesting example: despite their economic success, people's living conditions didn't improve as much and caring about the environment lagged behind the rest of the world.

Until ~2010 China's pollution was a state secret, now that there is a bit more wealth and citizens are more aware we can expect the PRC to do something about it.

Africa is another example of a poor, polluted country.

Ultimately, pollution can be a phase in a growing economy, but if you let technology to run its course, people will eventually move to non polluting tech - because they want to live in a nice world.

If you stop or regulate the economy, or try to come up with a solution, things will take much longer. Nuclear energy is a solution that, without political backslash, could have become our source of clean energy long ago.

The pandemic proved that disrupting the global economy to save lives wasn't an issue at all.

The issue is the right people feeling threatened for their lives. As soon as you can convince rich people that their survival is at risk, and they can't just fly off to another planet or live in their own biosphere somewhere in the Alps, something will be done.

you (and the other commenters) are ignoring the time component, which is quite important here. when quarantine started, most people thought it would only be for a few weeks or a couple months at the most. obviously some people are resisting, but most are willing to make a short-term sacrifice to help slow the spread. telling people they need to permanently reduce their level of consumption to combat climate change is a much bigger ask.

Maybe if instead of a pandemic a catastrophic climate event happened to occur in a sudden period of time, people might get the same impression that it's at most a thing that would last a few weeks or years because "there's no way this would happen to us now." But when more data comes in and it turns out the damage is permanent or long lasting, maybe those people forced to make changes won't end up going back to their original equilibrium. We could not in general forsee the sheer calamity the pandemic has caused in its short timeframe near the beginning. Large and drastic changes would probably have a greater effect on short-term memory than if we're essentially frogs in boiling water, even if the degree of environmental consequences ends up the same.

Because the changes the pandemic caused were drastic by its nature, so much behavior was regulated and put into law (large gatherings illegal, etc.) in such a short time. If it's inevitable that climate change will never occur drastically, how can those restrictions on growth and consumption not continually get pushed back because of lobbyists who see no short-term consequences?

Or given how humans can act, maybe they'd go back to their normal levels of consumption out of spite anyways. It's hard to tell.

Exactly, and truly getting serious about it would basically destroy the global economy in the short term. That's why rich people (and capitalism) don't like it, so they don't do anything about it. There's a big difference between a ~1-2 year disruption and a 5-10 year disruption, which is what I think it would take to make any serious difference vis a vis air pollution.

Just curious, who does like disrupting the global economy on a long term scale?

People who want a sustainable world for their grandchildren to grow up in.