[sustran] Bangkok Dispatch: Seeking Clean Asian Air (Plus the other side of Dr. Schipper)

[Eric Britton]

And don't forget to spend some quality time with Dr. Schipper at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArYUn3NAntE 


 


Bangkok Dispatch: Seeking Clean Asian Air

By Andrew C. Revkin
<http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/author/andrew-c-revkin/> 

Hanoi traffic

Asian cities, including Hanoi pictured here, are beset by traffic and smog.
(Credit: Lee Schipper)

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
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/world/14cloud.html> 's growing brown
clouds this week.

Postcard from Better Air Quality <http://www.baq2008.org/>  '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
<http://howyoucansavetheworld.com/2008/10/not-everyone-can-have-a-car-if.php
> .

This week, leaders from all the major countries and cities have been
gathering at a semi-annual event, Better Air Quality
<http://www.baq2008.org> '08, organized by the Clean Air Initiative for
Asian Cities, a group recently spun off from the Asian Development Bank.

There are four main goals: 

. Liveable, walkable, safe cities as the examples of Singapore and Seoul in
Asia show.
. Better technologies, not necessarily as expensive as many think, since
Asians have not yet dug holes as Americans have with a very car-intensive
world.
. Modest lifestyles, not the kinds Americans are used to but ones we're
beginning to adjust to as home ownership, water, food, energy and everything
else is suddenly more expensive or risky than we thought.
. Good governance, with the usual panoply of taxes, regulations to make the
first three outcomes happen. This was brought out by Enrique Penalosa,
former mayor of Bogota, who transformed that city and its bus system into
the envy of the world. 

Many informal, and in some cases, closed-door sessions here let public and
private stakeholders work on real solutions. BAQ 08 is upbeat on local air
pollution. In Hanoi, for example, a city with more motorcycles per capita
than New York has cars per capita, measures are being taken to clean up
<http://embarq.wri.org/en/Article.145.aspx>  the resulting pollution. China
has developed fuel economy standards on new cars, and high-level
representatives from other Asian governments attended a special workshop to
discuss how their countries should approach this issue. Bus rapid transit
around the world was featured as well.

But some of the messages from such conferences are depressing: Greenhouse
gas emissions continue to rise, and the success stories are still the
exception.

Lee Schipper, Global <http://metrostudies.berkeley.edu/>  Metropolitan
Studies, Univ. of Calif., Berkeley, and Precourt
<http://piee.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/htm/index.php?ref=home>  Institute for
Energy Efficiency, Stanford University 

Have you traveled or lived in Asia? If so, what do you see as signs of
progress, or big trouble? Dr. Schipper did point out to me that at least one
other element of the meeting was upbeat -- the music, provided at the
opening reception by none other than Lee Schipper and the Mitigators. Let's
go to the videotape: 

.         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArYUn3NAntE 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 55524 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://list.jca.apc.org/public/sustran-discuss/attachments/20081121/5d3c4881/attachment.bin