Worst Santiago Smog Since 1999 this Weekend

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Record Smog

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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. And this weekend it 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 I was on to something.

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 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. Require catalytic converters for all cars, no matter what time of day they are driven. 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 we knew it would this winter, then economically challenged Santiaguinos burn wood instead, because it's cheaper. But Ricardo Lagos 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. The plan is a complete disaster.

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 ridiculous, 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.