Opinion
1932: A foggy day at Lincoln’s Inn, London.
Credit
General Photographic Agency/Getty Images
Cambridge,
England — IN January, researchers at King’s College London announced
that pollution levels on Oxford Street, in central London, had exceeded
limits set for the entire year in just the first four days of 2015.
Similarly alarming numbers have been recorded for other streets in the
city — and yet the mayor, Boris Johnson, has delayed implementation of stricter air-quality measures until 2020.
What’s
happening in London is being played out in cities worldwide, as efforts
to curtail the onslaught of air pollution are stymied by short-term
vested interests, with potentially disastrous results.
This
is not the first time that society has confronted a threat of this
kind. In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution brought millions
into the world’s cities, which expanded with unprecedented rapidity,
leading to atmospheric pollution as the fossil fuels burned in urban
homes poured huge quantities of sooty, sulfurous emissions into the air.
Nowhere
was this more obvious, or more threatening, than in the greatest of all
Victorian cities, London, where air pollution was literally in front of
everyone’s face in the form of the city’s infamous, polluted fog.
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