Worst Santiago Smog since 1999 this Weekend; Classism Strong as Ever
When British Intelligence published those reports of Saddam Hussein's ability to attack European targets within 45 minutes, it was obviously fake, pulled right out of a bad spy novel. Yet politicians and pundits in the United States seemed to take it seriously. Sure, politicians aren't necessarily smart. But in this case I suspect it was more their beholdenness to political alliances and special interests that caused them to act shocked and frightened, and vote for War.
Even more overwhelmingly predictable, months before it went into effect, was that Santiago Chile's revamped transportation system would be a massive failure. The micros, yellow city buses that scream and belch out clouds of black, were not replaced. But repainted: green and white. Nobody was fooled. Or maybe they were. Now everyone is acting shocked that smog has reached appallingly dangerous levels.
Trumped up as a solution to Santiago's constant, dangerous smog, Transantiago was going to eliminate the need for the government to call pre-emergency levels. Yet two have already been called, this weekend reached the worst level since 1999. I didn't see it in the news, I just noticed that when I opened my window the air was super-characteristically foul smelling. I left for the weekend, because I have that luxury. I came back to read reports that my nose wasn't lying.
A pre-emergency level is called when PM-10 (particles of 10 microns in diameter) reach a level of 300 or more per cubic meter. Pre-emergencies require limits on car driving and factory pollutants. When they are called, PM-10 levels go down. But the naughty little government doesn't always call them. Nor are they measuring the only harmful factor of pollution. For instance, PM-2.5 particles are smaller, and dig deeper into the lungs and stay there permanently, causing cancer.
And a study by the University of Santiago warns that Santiago's warning system fails to forecast 40%-50% of the days that Carbon Monoxide levels are higher than healthy.
This weekend, PM-10 reached 409 in the poor community of Pudahuel. 344 in the city center. And, to give you a sense of how tragicomic classism is in Chile: the rich community of Las Condes got only 39. I'm moving there.
In response to these record levels, El Mercurio published an article which basically amounts to a bunch of politicians and physicists citing recycled information about how bad smog is, how the poor people should burn less wood in their houses, etc. But NONE of them seems to be taking any initiative. Sure, they bounce around a few ideas -- the best one is a London-style congestion reduction through tollbooths. But why don't they make that a real initiative? Why don't they tax the hell out of car ownership. Jail people who drive without catalytic converters. Subsidize heating for poor families who burn wood instead of gas.
In their defence, I wouldn't piss off so many special interests either if I were a had a cushy government job that paid the rent in Las Condes.
Ex-president Ricardo Lagos, the mastermind behind the Transantiago debacle whose appointment as a UN Global Warning ambassador received the harsh protest of 20 NGO's in Chile for his abysmal environmental record, is now blaming Argentina for Chile's pollution problem.
That's like blaming our failure in Iraq on the withdrawl of 10 troops by the Slovakian government.
Yes, a portion of smog is created by the poor people who burn wood in stoves. And when Argentina stops exporting natural gas during the winter, as it did last winter and you knew it would this winter, then economically challenged Santiaguinos burn wood instead, because it's cheaper. But Ricardo Lagos, who will probably get elected again after Bachelet steps down, would prefer to blame it on Argentina. And he gets pissed off when asked about it. "There's less noise pollution, isn't there?"
Actually, that's worse too. The re-routing caused more buses to drive by my house. And they're the same loud, screaming cancer buses as always. So, sorry. Your plan is a complete disaster. And you, Ricardo Lagos, are a charlatan posing as an environmental socialist. A Berkeley professor. A pathetic excuse for a human being.
But at this point in the conference, you chose to snap back and say, "I'm not running Chile." What a wanker. You can blame Argentina (and, indirectly, Chile's poor) for creating smog in Santiago, but when the questions get rough you get angry.
Instead, you might think to offer fresh ideas. Like why not SUBSIDIZE GAS FOR POOR PEOPLE. Am I the first one to think of that? Could be!
Anyway, it strikes me as strange that poor people and their wood-burning stoves are one of the most oft-cited causes of smog. About 70% of smog is caused by cars, and the law restricting cars without catalytic converters is only in effect till 10PM. Which is bullshit, because plenty of those clunkers drive past 10PM. And when a bunch of people were fined this weekend for driving during the day, many said they had no idea there was such a law. I believe them.
The government is not at all serious about tackling the smog problem, and there isn't even a public education program for responsible driving practices.
There's no serious investigation into clandestine factories that operate at night. In the Mercurio article it was mentioned that one of the physicists cited a factory recently discovered that burned tires all night long.
The failed public transportation system of Ricardo Lagos is really the only program that was promised to have a positive impact on the smog, and it was predictably a failure. Even if it did work, it wouldn't have eliminated smog.
But Ricardo Lagos seems more comfortable preaching to the world about global warming than facing special interests at home. He'd rather blame the poor, and Argentina. Meanwhile, his failure is evident in a thick, daily and almost never-interrupted haze across Santiago, where smog accounts for 10% of illness, and deaths among babies and the elderly. In the long term it causes asthma and cancer. Thanks Lagos.
Even more overwhelmingly predictable, months before it went into effect, was that Santiago Chile's revamped transportation system would be a massive failure. The micros, yellow city buses that scream and belch out clouds of black, were not replaced. But repainted: green and white. Nobody was fooled. Or maybe they were. Now everyone is acting shocked that smog has reached appallingly dangerous levels.
Trumped up as a solution to Santiago's constant, dangerous smog, Transantiago was going to eliminate the need for the government to call pre-emergency levels. Yet two have already been called, this weekend reached the worst level since 1999. I didn't see it in the news, I just noticed that when I opened my window the air was super-characteristically foul smelling. I left for the weekend, because I have that luxury. I came back to read reports that my nose wasn't lying.
A pre-emergency level is called when PM-10 (particles of 10 microns in diameter) reach a level of 300 or more per cubic meter. Pre-emergencies require limits on car driving and factory pollutants. When they are called, PM-10 levels go down. But the naughty little government doesn't always call them. Nor are they measuring the only harmful factor of pollution. For instance, PM-2.5 particles are smaller, and dig deeper into the lungs and stay there permanently, causing cancer.
And a study by the University of Santiago warns that Santiago's warning system fails to forecast 40%-50% of the days that Carbon Monoxide levels are higher than healthy.
This weekend, PM-10 reached 409 in the poor community of Pudahuel. 344 in the city center. And, to give you a sense of how tragicomic classism is in Chile: the rich community of Las Condes got only 39. I'm moving there.
In response to these record levels, El Mercurio published an article which basically amounts to a bunch of politicians and physicists citing recycled information about how bad smog is, how the poor people should burn less wood in their houses, etc. But NONE of them seems to be taking any initiative. Sure, they bounce around a few ideas -- the best one is a London-style congestion reduction through tollbooths. But why don't they make that a real initiative? Why don't they tax the hell out of car ownership. Jail people who drive without catalytic converters. Subsidize heating for poor families who burn wood instead of gas.
In their defence, I wouldn't piss off so many special interests either if I were a had a cushy government job that paid the rent in Las Condes.
Ex-president Ricardo Lagos, the mastermind behind the Transantiago debacle whose appointment as a UN Global Warning ambassador received the harsh protest of 20 NGO's in Chile for his abysmal environmental record, is now blaming Argentina for Chile's pollution problem.
That's like blaming our failure in Iraq on the withdrawl of 10 troops by the Slovakian government.
Yes, a portion of smog is created by the poor people who burn wood in stoves. And when Argentina stops exporting natural gas during the winter, as it did last winter and you knew it would this winter, then economically challenged Santiaguinos burn wood instead, because it's cheaper. But Ricardo Lagos, who will probably get elected again after Bachelet steps down, would prefer to blame it on Argentina. And he gets pissed off when asked about it. "There's less noise pollution, isn't there?"
Actually, that's worse too. The re-routing caused more buses to drive by my house. And they're the same loud, screaming cancer buses as always. So, sorry. Your plan is a complete disaster. And you, Ricardo Lagos, are a charlatan posing as an environmental socialist. A Berkeley professor. A pathetic excuse for a human being.
But at this point in the conference, you chose to snap back and say, "I'm not running Chile." What a wanker. You can blame Argentina (and, indirectly, Chile's poor) for creating smog in Santiago, but when the questions get rough you get angry.
Instead, you might think to offer fresh ideas. Like why not SUBSIDIZE GAS FOR POOR PEOPLE. Am I the first one to think of that? Could be!
Anyway, it strikes me as strange that poor people and their wood-burning stoves are one of the most oft-cited causes of smog. About 70% of smog is caused by cars, and the law restricting cars without catalytic converters is only in effect till 10PM. Which is bullshit, because plenty of those clunkers drive past 10PM. And when a bunch of people were fined this weekend for driving during the day, many said they had no idea there was such a law. I believe them.
The government is not at all serious about tackling the smog problem, and there isn't even a public education program for responsible driving practices.
There's no serious investigation into clandestine factories that operate at night. In the Mercurio article it was mentioned that one of the physicists cited a factory recently discovered that burned tires all night long.
The failed public transportation system of Ricardo Lagos is really the only program that was promised to have a positive impact on the smog, and it was predictably a failure. Even if it did work, it wouldn't have eliminated smog.
But Ricardo Lagos seems more comfortable preaching to the world about global warming than facing special interests at home. He'd rather blame the poor, and Argentina. Meanwhile, his failure is evident in a thick, daily and almost never-interrupted haze across Santiago, where smog accounts for 10% of illness, and deaths among babies and the elderly. In the long term it causes asthma and cancer. Thanks Lagos.
posted by Chileno @ 11:22 PM
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8 Comments:
Lagos is a jackass and has no environmental credentials. He is a soviet style socialist who likes big infrastructural projects designed by people in the bureacracy who like to believe from their small pedestal in the creation of panacea through the laying of concrete.
Discrepancy...how does...a reduction in the number of old buses equal greatest smog levels in 9 years...Transantiago has pulled bus numbers down...they filled there immediate need for more buses by repainting some of the old buses...but there was a significant, im not sure how big, infusion of new Volvo, less polluting buses.
Im not following your logic...does the paint on the buses cause more smog?
People are driving more because Transantiago flopped.
Many of the relief buses that the government has introduced to reduce congestion are sub-standard and polluting. Not to mention micros piratas...
Pollution has reached abysmal levels because the government is inept or uninterested in regulating emissions. Vehicle smog checks are a joke, illegal factories go unregulated, gas is not supplied to the poor, who burn wood, ETC.
So by introducing a 'solution' to the smog, as Transantiago WAS promoted, then the government side-stepped its responsibility to really clean up the air. Are there other real initiatives with real money behind them?
Even if Transantiago worked (which it doesn't, and they have and will put even MORE buses on the streets), it would only have reduced a tiny portion of emissions.
The government, in promoting Transantiago, promised an end to pre-emergency warnings. That's no end to smog. In fact, the smog alert model doesn't even consider a variety of serious concerns, including PM 2.5, carbon monoxide, and everything else that's in smog like sulfur dioxide and god knows what.
Painting the buses green and white, along with sinking MILLIONS of dollars into Transantiago, is a mis-use of resources that could be better spent on, well, just about ANYTHING that would reduce emissions inside the valley of Santiago.
You're more informed, Tomás. Besides blaming Argentina and fucking up public transportation, what is the government DOING to reduce emissions inside the city?
Why the miserable attitude toward Berkeley professors, I wonder?
>>>Why the miserable attitude toward Berkeley professors, I wonder?
Hehe, don't read too much into that. I didn't go to berkeley :-) I'm more commenting on the absurdity of Lagos' prancing around the first world as if he were exemplary of anything besides third world corruption.
Lagos is now a professor at Brown University.
We should contact witty and crass Brown students to ask him tough questions,,, instead of the stupid ones about dictatorhsip, democratic transition, etc...which are boring...although of course very important.
Hi Tomas, =)
Brown University is often mocked . . I mean . . referred as the "Slacker Ivy" by the other Ivy-League universities, especially by the Big Three. Brown's curriculum of no grades and no requirements is widely known for attracting the brash Park Avenue Princesses and the self-loathing. . .(cough). . ."Bourgeois Bohemians". . . (cough). . . hipsters . ;) Just as Cornell University is referred as the Nouveau Riche of the bunch and Columbia University is lovingly called "Yale's waitlist". ;)
Better yet, once class starts we should ask Brownies, if Professor Lagos ever lectures his students sternly while wagging a disapproving finger at them. ;)
Pretty pathetic that the former president of a small country can't even make it past second and third rate institutions like Brown and Berkeley.
Dawwling it may not be Harvard, Yale or Princeton ;) but Brown University is still one of the eight Ivy League Universities.
Lagos will join ex-Brasilian president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The fit is rather perfect, no? ;) Brown's "Limousine liberal" socialites will completement Ricardo Lagos' Socialist idiologies quite nicely.((giggles))
Berkeley is way revolutionary, the patina is too radical. While Brown and Sarah Lawrence have the old-money prestige where parents feel comfortable sending their "out there" or academically challenged kids. Daddy Warbucks won't be worried their little angel will fail out since both schools have a no grade curriculm.
I would of had a free ride at Sarah Lawrence. ((grin)) If only my mother had not noticed all freaky looking lesbos, Gothies, and touchie-feelie types while touring the campus as a high school senior in the late 90's.((sigh)) To be honest she was not impressed with the so called "seven sisters". ;)
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