Bus firms face crackdown after landmark ruling on air pollution in cities
BUS operators are in the firing line over high levels of air pollution in Glasgow after a landmark legal victory by campaigners.
The city is one of 16 in the UK that is in breach of European Union air pollution limits, with soaring average levels of nitrogen dioxide – which has been linked to coronary artery disease, heart attacks and strokes.
Five Supreme Court judges ordered the UK Government to take “immediate action” and to produce new air quality plans by the end of 2015.
Yesterday one councillor said a shake-up of the bus industry was needed as he accused the industry of being “one of the biggest culprits”.
Emissions from diesel vehicles are a major source of the gas, which is particularly harmful to people with asthma or existing lung problems.
However, Councillor Alistair Watson, executive member for sustainability at Glasgow City Council, said re-regulation of buses would need to be explored with the Scottish Government.
Asthma sufferer Mic Starbuck, 65, from Burnside, Glasgow, is among hundreds of people at risk.
He added: “It got so bad for me five years ago that when I went to visit my GP, I got sent to hospital because part of my lung had collapsed. I’m being looked after now and I’m on medication but this pollution hastens death.”
Announcing the decision, Lord Carnwath said: “The new government, whatever its political complexion, should be left in no doubt as to the need for immediate action to address this issue.”
The outcome marks the end of a fiveyear legal battle brought by campaign group ClientEarth, and also has implications for the Scottish Government, which is responsible for enforcing EU air quality targets in Scotland. Air pollution has been linked to a range of illnesses and has been blamed for causing more than 300 deaths per year in Glasgow.
Emilia Hanna, ai r pollution campaigner for Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: “This is a huge victory in the fight for clean air. The ruling marks the climax in a five-year legal battle where the UK and Scottish Governments have been shamefully caught trying to shirk their responsibilities. Their lack of action to tackle air pollution has cost thousands of lives.
ClientEarth said the “historic” ruling would force the Government to tackle the worst polluting diesel vehicles, and urged the creation of a national network of low-emission zones.
A Scottish Government spokesman said it would study the judgment to understand its implications.
If you do not remember smog, breathe easy. For the moment, at least. That hellish product of mist and brown coal once killed thousands routinely in our great cities. Then, almost 60 years ago, the Westminster Parliament decided clean air was not such a bad idea, and passed an Act to make it so.
Do we need another law? In the United Kingdom in the early 1950s sulfur dioxide swept the streets, carrying off young and old. Now we confront nitrogen dioxide.
Anyone who tries to move through Glasgow, Edinburgh, or other places besides, tastes its reek and, sometimes, suffers its taint. If the Supreme Court orders a government – meaning the next government – to clean up its act by the year’s end, who will argue?
Some might. They would be, once eyes were scrubbed clean, myopic. The clear danger to the health of people ought to be paramount, but if that case will not suffice, there is an economic argument. Filthy cities, toxic cities, cities that repel their own inhabitants, are bad for business. This can and has been shown on every continent.
The court, led by Lord Carnwath, has found in favour of Client Earth and others after a five-year struggle to prove that the urban environment in places such as Glasgow can no longer be sustained.
A burden falls, in particular, on a Scottish Government that tends to talk more about the economic potential of alternative energy than about simple filth in urban lungs. So why not a Clean Air Act for Scotland? In the mid-1950s, the Government was less than keen. It believed – governments do not change by much – that a reform would hinder the economy.
But the ensuing legislation was, to modern eyes, remarkable in its scope and ambition. In essence, the United Kingdom was forbidden the habit of poisoning itself. A Scottish administration often accused of hubris might wish to imitate at least one example.
After all, Lord Carnwath speaks of “immediate action”. Decode the juridical language and you hear the legal voice say that enough time has been wasted on this; lives, too. The administrations in Westminster and Edinburgh have both shouted into the fog
The pollution endured by children, businesses, travellers, tourists, dogs, birds and passing politicians is now, in Glasgow and elsewhere, out of hand.
Bus companies will not like it. If emissions are part of their business, however, they have an obligation to deal with any mess they might create. Transport groups have tried hard in this respect, but the pollution measurements found regularly in Edinburgh, Glasgow and elsewhere are hard to dispute. “Environmentally-friendly” travel still leaves a lot to be desired.
Clean air should be a simple enough desire. Pollution is not, as the Clean Air Act ought to have made obvious in 1956, an inevitable consequence of urban life. If our cities are to be restored to greatness, some of the muck, old and new, needs to be banished once and for all.