POLLUTION KILLS

Rich countries have the enormous advantage in that much of the energy consumption they need to sacrifice is inessential (driving to the supermarket when you could walk, sticking to your old bulbs instead of switching to LEDs, etc.).

But for most Indians, additional consumption and additional energy consumption in particular is not a luxury. The very low energy consumption in rural India today is due to a mode of existence that is often unpleasant and dangerous. They cannot possibly use less, and ought to have a right to use more. In that case, is there a rationale for poor countries to stay completely outside of the climate conversation? Or, at a minimum, to limit any sacrifice to their richest citizens, who have the lifestyles and the emissions of rich Americans?

It is hard to say no. There is certainly something deeply unfair about the world’s poor paying for the past and present indulgence of the world’s rich. Unfortunately, there are two problems with taking this position. The first, which we already discussed, is that the consequences of a temporary let-off for the developing world may encourage many years of life for the world’s most polluting technologies. The temporary let-off may not be that temporary. Most victims will be in the developing world, so people in the developed world may be all too happy to go along with that.

But, second, the real crux of the issue is whether the developing world can afford to continue at its current pollution levels (or grow them), even without the threat of global warming.

This pollution kills. In China, coal-fired indoor heating is subsidized on the north side of the river Huai but not on the south, on the grounds that it is colder in the north. One can see a precipitous drop in the quality of the air when crossing the river from south to north. Correspondingly, there is a similar drop in life expectancy.²⁷ Estimates imply that moving China to the worldwide standard for the concentration of particulate matter in the air would save the equivalent of 3.7 billion years of life.

China’s skies are, however, positively pristine compared to those of many big Indian cities. Several Indian cities, including the capital New Delhi, top the list of most air polluted cities on earth.²⁸ In November 2017, the chief minister of Delhi compared the city to a gas chamber. According to the US embassy’s measurements, at that time the air in New Delhi reached pollution levels forty-eight times the guideline value established by the World Health Organization. As in China, this level of pollution is undoubtedly deadly.²⁹ Admissions to hospitals surge every November when pollution skyrockets. Globally, the Lancet Commission on pollution and health estimates that 9 million premature deaths were caused by air pollution in 2015.³⁰ More than 2.5 million of those deaths were in India, the most in any single country.³¹

Pollution in Delhi in the winter is due to a combination of several factors (including pure geographical bad luck), but some of it is due to behaviors that could be changed. One important pollutant comes from burning the stubble left after crop-cutting in states neighboring Delhi. The smoke from the burning outside the city is then mixed with various pollutants produced inside the city: dust from construction, exhaust from vehicles, residue from the burning of trash and the open fires the poor use to cook and keep warm in winter.

The smog in Delhi is so bad there is a clear impetus to act immediately. There is no trade-off between the quality of life today and in the future, since people are dying now. The only trade-off is between consuming less or choking. And even this trade-off may be mostly illusory. Two different studies, one involving workers in a textile manufacturing firm in India³² and one on travel agents in China have shown that on days when ambient pollution is high, productivity is low. So more pollution may mean less consumption.³³

Delhi is a relatively rich city. City dwellers can easily afford to pay the farmers not to burn their crops, and to instead use machines to bury them and ready the soil for the next planting. The government could ban open fires in the city and create heated rooms where the poor could gather on cold nights. It could replace trash-burning with a more modern trash collection and treatment system. It could ban old cars (or in fact ban diesel-fueled cars altogether) and introduce congestion pricing or another form of congestion management.³⁴ It could enforce more vigorously the tough industrial pollution standards on the books but not typically respected. It could improve the public transportation system. It could shut down or upgrade the large thermal plants operating within the city. Perhaps none of these would be sufficient individually, but combined they would surely improve the situation.

None of this is out of reach. For example, a “friends of the court” brief submitted to India’s supreme court suggested that a subsidy of Rs 20 billion (about $300 million) would be enough for the farmers of Punjab and Haryana to purchase the equipment needed to prepare their fields. This is only approximately Rs 1,000 ($14 at the current exchange rate, a little over $70 at PPP) per inhabitant of greater Delhi. Surprisingly (and frustratingly), despite the urgency of the bad air, the political demand for such a response is not overwhelming.

This may change. Slum dwellers asked to compare the conditions of life in the city to what they had experienced in their villages mostly reported they preferred Delhi.³⁸ The only thing they really complained about was the environment and, in particular, the air. In the winter of 2017–2018, there was finally some outrage in Delhi. Schoolchildren took to the streets when their schools were shut down due to the dangerously high pollution levels. Even in China, which is not a democracy, the pressure of public opinion is said to have contributed to the government’s desire to do something about pollution. In India, it may soon become enough of a public issue to lead to some change. The priority should then be to enact policies that will lead to cleaner consumption patterns, even if they come at some cost. The costs may not be very large. In many cases, India would be able to leapfrog to the cleaner technology (e.g., when the poor finally get electricity, they get LED bulbs). In some cases, the new technology may be more expensive than the old (e.g., clean cars may be more expensive than dirty cars). This means the poor will need to be compensated. But the total cost of this is small, and could easily be borne by the elite if the political will was there.