Let’s keep winning the pollution fight
LONDON is suffering from hot, sleepless nights, sweaty days and the prospect of a drenching in thunderstorms. The heatwave has been long and extreme but there are compensations. A glance at the website of the London Air Quality Network shows that the city’s pollution levels are lower than they would have been in baking weather like this before emissions controls began to have an effect. The clarity of the early days of lockdown — a time when cities around the planet found themselves freed from smog — has gone as traffic has returned. But pollution today in London from nitrogen dioxide — the harmful, invisible chemical compound created when fuels such as diesel are burned — is still forecast to be low.
The battle to improve the city’s air quality isn’t over — but ground has been gained. That’s also true in the national and global fight on carbon emissions. In 1991 Britain emitted a peak of just over 600 million tonne equivalents of carbon dioxide. Last year, despite more travel, more people and a bigger economy, the figure was just over 350. We don’t have data for 2020, but lockdown will have sent the number plunging.
Technology is helping win the fight. Windfarms have replaced coal mines. Modern jet planes are more efficient than the glorious but dirty 747s which have now been pulled from the skies. Electric cars are becoming a familiar sight. But can this progress be sustained? There are depressing signs that Britain has shifted from public transport to car use. The roads are almost as busy as they were before Covid, while clean trains are often empty. Londoners are cycling a lot more but they are driving, too. It’s understandable — and it’s what, until recently, the Government called on people to do. But for the long-term good we need to find greener ways to travel. Otherwise progress in improving air quality and carbon emissions will go into reverse — and the last thing we need now is more bad news.
Technology is helping, but in the long term we must find greener ways to travel