Pollution has long blighted the air that we breathe. Complaints about fumes generated by coal-burning in London were recorded as early at the 13th century. The heavy smogs that descended on the capital in the 1950s killed thousands. Governments have long attempted to regulate the pollution of our cities: in 1273, authorities introduced a prohibition on burning coal in London due to it being “prejudicial to health”.
In recent years, air pollution has become less visible, but no less deadly. The noxious oxides and particulates that are linked to higher incidence of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and cancer may not create the pea soup of industrial times, but they are estimated to be responsible for 40,000 premature deaths a year, a public health crisis on the scale of smoking or obesity.
London breached legal annual pollution limits in just the first five days of 2017. But this is not just a problem affecting the capital: almost nine out of 10 urban areas have had levels of nitrogen dioxide above legal limits since 2010.
While no one is immune, pollution particularly affects children, whose lungs are still developing. Key culprits are diesel vehicles, followed by gas combustion from boilers and cookers.
Air pollution shares none of the intractable characteristics of problems such as climate change and microbial resistance. Unlike the latter, air pollution, on the whole, respects international borders and does not require the international treaties and agreements that can take years to hammer out.
Local action to tackle air pollution can immeasurably improve air quality: the thinktank Policy Exchange has estimated that properly investing in reducing air pollution in London would increase life expectancy for its residents by an astounding six months.
As the problem has become less detectable to the naked eye, so, it seems, has been the willingness of successive governments to do anything about it. In fact, government policy over the last 15 years has, on balance, made air pollution worse, not better. The car tax regime was rebalanced to favour diesel over petrol, because diesel vehicles used to emit lower levels of greenhouse gases and policymakers believed manufacturers would deliver cleaner diesel cars. The market share of diesel cars rocketed as consumers responded to incentives: nearly half of the new cars sold in the UK now have diesel engines.
But thanks to lax standards in European emission standard testing, the vast majority of diesel cars continue to belch out poisonous fumes far in excess of the legal limit. There is now evidence that diesel cars may even emit more carbon than petrol engines. With hindsight, incentivising consumers to buy diesel cars must surely count among one of the most counterproductive environmental policies.
Cleaning up our air is eminently achievable with the right package of measures. We need a mix of clean air zones that include charging owners of diesel vehicles to drive into densely populated urban areas, a scrappage scheme for diesel cars, a tax system that discourages owners from buying diesel and much tougher European testing.
Despite the dreadful death toll, the government has dragged its feet for seven years. It ignored the legally binding European targets on air pollution that the UK was obliged to meet by 2010 and only produced a plan when it was forced to do so after a lengthy court battle instigated by the environmental campaign group Client Earth. The plan it produced under duress was so thin that the supreme court ruled it had to produce a better one by the end of last month.
Still, the government tried to delay further, arguing that it was prevented from publishing a plan under the purdah convention that the government makes no new policy announcements before a general election. The high court ruled against the government last month. The document it finally published last Friday was rightly condemned as utterly inadequate to the task, lacking any specific proposals for tax changes or a diesel scrappage scheme. It kicks the issue into the long grass at the expense of people’s health.
The government is clearly concerned about proposing any measures that would hit diesel drivers a few weeks before the general election. Yet Thursday’s local election results show it has nothing to fear: barring an electoral earthquake, it is on course for a decisive victory. Votes before lives: that’s Theresa May’s telling choice.
The Observer view on curbing air pollution | Observer editorial
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