Bangkok Dispatch: Seeking Clean Asian Air

By Andrew C. Revkin

Lee Schipper, a specialist on cities, transportation and pollution diving time between Stanford and Berkeley, is a frequent presence on Dot Earth and a source for me when pondering how the world heads toward nine billion mainly-urban humans with the fewest traffic jams and smog alerts. He sent the following note from a conference in Bangkok on cleaning the air in Asian cities. You may have seen the news on Asia’s growing brown clouds this week.

Postcard from Better Air Quality ‘08:

Much has been made of rising aspirations of the middle class in developing countries, with the implication that this must mean literally hundreds of millions of cars — and hundreds of millions of tonnes of oil use and resulting CO2 emissions. Unfortunately these aspirations continue to collide with reality in the congested and polluted cities all over Asia, compounded by the huge brown clouds of pollution hovering over many parts of Asia recently noted in The Times. The foul air, with people stuck in traffic, is costing thousands of unnecessary deaths every year. This is not a new problem, as I have noted elsewhere.

This week, leaders from all the major countries and cities have been gathering at a semi-annual event, Better Air Quality ‘08, organized by the Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities, a group recently spun off from the Asian Development Bank.

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Bangkok Dispatch: Seeking Clean Asian Air