Who cares?

Everybody wants clean air, they just live with the bad one because the big city pays well (though when you correct it for costs of living, it gets muddier).

Completely irrelevant. Shit air is shit air. And this air? It’s shit air.

The point of my original comment was that Tokyo gets a hall pass because y’all apparently loved Akira.

Huh? You are claiming Tokyo is shit, so is there a city of conparable size that does better? Or are you just demanding something impossible?

What’s impossible about it? Where are the bans on diesel trucks in the city centre? Where are the zero emissions vehicles visible in just about every other metropolis? Where are the congestion charges? Bike lanes? Tree cover?

This is a political problem and as long as the Japanese auto lobby has the LDP in their pocket, we who live here live the consequences.

You’re saying other cities’ air quality experience is totally irrelevant in some posts and then making a direct comparison to policies that other cities have implemented in this post. It doesn’t seem a consistent position to me.

IMO, what other cities do (and the results they get) is relevant when discussing what’s good, bad, or practically possible.

I said Tokyo has shit air. Then came a chorus of whataboutists saying it wasn’t as bad as London, NYC, Bangalore. I said that’s irrelevant: dirty air is dirty air. You said I was asking the impossible, I said what about policies that actively target tailpipe emissions? To improve air quality here, in Tokyo. The city in which I have lived for most of my adult life.

Where’s the inconsistency?

You claim that "I said Tokyo has shit air" while ignoring the parent comment you responded to.

The comment you responded to was about how this low noise experience is not unique to Europe, and saying Japan has similar experiences.

You came in with "Tokyo has shit air" as a response. Now you claim the others are "whataboutists" when they are merely continuing the original conversation topic comparing Europe with Japan.