Rising Wisely

By Victoria Broadus

The newspapers here have such interesting and entertaining pieces.

An ad for “THE EMPYREAN: Paradise Regained” just caught my attention:

“Today, city living is synonymous with traffic, pollution and crowded infrastructure. The answer lies in the concept of suburban living.”

For some reason this reference to suburban living as a “concept” (and as the answer to terrible pollution and infrastructural failures) uncannily conjures images of the 1950s United States, and ads for places like Levittown.

Also in the paper today were the unexpected and certainly unintended consequences of the auto drivers’ strike in Bangalore on October 12th.

About 80,000 auto drivers went on strike on Monday to protest the Transport Department’s “oppressive” demand that they paint their autos an environmentally-conscious green and use digital meters (less easily tampered with); in the meantime, you may have felt a little better oxigenated! Indeed, the auto drivers’ latest strike in response to government attempts to make autos  less of an environmental scourge – which began around 2005, with the switch to liquified petroleum gas, or LPG- has, like in past strikes, demonstrated just how much they still need to be made “greener.” (In spite of the Times of India 2004 claim that LPG autos would be “pollution-free.”) On Monday, October 12th, when the autos stayed off the roads, the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board compared air quality at City station with that of October 10th. There was a 28.92% decrease in sulphur dioxide; a 58.8% decrease in oxides of nitrogen (the main pollutant from LPG autos); a 33.3% decrease in oxides of carbon; and, an 18.1% decrease in RSPM. Rain may have also contributed to such drastically lower pollutant levels.

The Transport Commissioner said the high pollution from LPG autos is because most of them are “two-stroke,” incomplete combustion autos; the city is trying to eventually replace these with “four-stroke” autos. But the article doesn’t quite explain what difference this will make. Anyone know?