I did not say that it was pollution alone - more like a number of factors: Diet, access to quality medical facilities (and actually using them), income, climate, smoking, alcohol all of these can play a role - even the ethnic composition of an area can play a role. The reason that the German figures are more moderate in their breadth was maybe because I was unable to find individual results for towns - the German figures refer to entire states. Nonetheless I have heard that the gap in England is the widest in Europe - and this doesn't even include Scotland ! All statistics are difficult to interpret W_Y, I know this, I could start by saying that people who live close to motorways die younger than others therefore............., however, those living close to motorways are likely to be from the lower income groups and are, therefore, likely to have a lower life expectancy for quite other reasons. Poor people are more likely to smoke, more likely to have an inbalanced diet, more likely to live in a polluted area, more likely to live in a dangerous area, more likely to suffer from sleeplessness, and, in some ways, more likely to suffer from stress. So which was the root cause ? Also, generally speaking, rural areas in the south have higher life expectancies than anywhere else - Kensington and Chelsea is the exception, and hardly typical for inner city areas, in that it includes many people who are not permanently resident there.
Yeah, I know you did not infer that it was due to pollution - I just used the pollution factor as an argument to show it is not a simple causal of early death in inner cities. As I said life expectancy demographics is a horribly complex subject - I did read that East London was a particular "hot spot" as well. My father came from a VERY large family in North London (he had 10 brothers and 3 sisters), from what I can find out (my dad was the youngest) they nearly all died very young and my dad passed in his early fifties. I am convinced it was poverty and life style - poor food, smokers, bad reputation of a large Irish family in North London all contributing.
Pollution is not the simple, one and only, cause of early death. But it stands to reason that those unfortunate enough to live close to major road junctions or to motorways or similar traffic conditions lead lives which are measureably worse off as a result - and that is through no fault of their own. I smoked for about 40 years before giving up a year ago but I would never have dreamed of blowing smoke in someones face and was largely in favour of the strengthening of anti smoking laws to protect non smokers - however, never once, has any car driver bothered to ask whether I objected to his exhaust fumes. Fly over any big city and look at how much area is taken up by cars - whether for roads, car parks, whatever - if you were a Martian you could be forgiven for thinking that they were the dominant life form - with people springing here and there and having to wait to avoid them. I want a future where towns are created primarily with pedestrians and cyclists in mind, where public transport has priority, and where passengers who use it are rewarded.
Agreed..... and we do need non- fossil fuel transportation and electricity etc..... and it will come. I was surprised by those pollution stats but they were the top item on our BBC TV local news and I actuallt messaged the news room to get the source: They told me: "Global Action Plan says Leeds is one of the worst places in the UK for air pollution - with 680 people in the city expected to die prematurely this year as a result. Nationally, Public Health England says air pollution costs the NHS £480m, while obesity costs £304m" I do think we need to be careful when refuting anything because of the so called interests of the researchers. It is like the American gun lobby rubbishing the number of deaths with guns. https://www.globalactionplan.org.uk/mission They seem to be a worthy orgnaisation and not a pressure group
So far we seem no nearer to getting away from traditional cars. Many of the small electric cars would not even get me into town to pick up my shopping. Two places have been installed in the supermarket car park where you can recharge your car free, but they are always empty. The average distance an electric car will travel is around 80 miles, so to get to a ferry in Dieppe I would have to stop four times for a recharge. Just not practical for a journey of any length then. Also electricity production needs to be thought about. Many of the western countries are close to failure to provide sufficient for our current needs, so to add to the requirements would be a major challenge. Renewable energy is not going to be the answer as you cannot rely on the weather. Tidal could help if more schemes were available. Certainly we would not want to get to the stage where dirty fuel is brought back into use as is happening in Germany because they placed too much faith in renewable sources. Our state owned EDF, well 10% is not owned by the state, is close to collapse having invested in turbines which do not produce what they should while trying to renew some of the nuclear power stations. Government funding has been reduced because they are short of money. Towns and cities are a different case to the rural areas, but more than half the population do not live in them yet still need electricity. When we sort out supply problems and a new form of battery for an electric car we might take a step forward, but it seems to me that we are far away from that objective at present.
Have you not seen what Tesla are doing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S It's work in progress, the electric cars currently being developed in the US are increasing in range and the price is slowly dropping, it'll take a few more years but we're getting there. Other companies are slowly catching up, it won't take as long as you think. On the renewable energy front it's the same thing. It won't happen overnight but we're progressing fast. I love the idea of the huge solar panel array being discussed in the Sahara desert, the next step will be storage and distribution, but it's not impossible. I have faith that some intelligent and caring people are putting their time into solving the issue, rather than just giving up and continuing to ruin this planet. https://www.toyota.co.uk/world-of-toyota/environment/ultimate-eco-car.json https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec
Yorkie - I do not doubt that some people who have existing respiratory issues are impacted by pollution and will die early as a result. But even in the text you have copied and pasted it states "expected", that is because they are basing their numbers on WHO data and extrapolating it for Leeds - it has no basis on actual data for Leeds. For instance does it use data for the number of people in Leeds who have existing respiratory issues that might be impacted by air pollution and what assumptions are made on the % of those that would die early because of the impact of pollution? Even using extensive modelling the numbers are only ever a prediction, yet GAP are pitching this as factual and using a name like WHO to add credibility. Even the numbers you are quoted in the original post and then in the last post contradict each other. Originally it states that the cost to the NHS locally was £480m and then above it states that is the national number. That is why I doubt these pressure groups with some of their questionable funding (check their own web-site) who are registered as a charity (I wonder how much they are paying themselves). Same argument can be made for alcohol.
Simple answer is wealth... More complex than that I know but other factors include race, lifestyle etc. Frankly anything over 70 is a bonus and I'll be happy to pop my clogs at 70... in fact I'd rather die like my Grandfather at 65 from sudden death than live out a degenerating existence into my 80s. Certainly can't blame the differences on car polution as I'm sure its worse in Kensington than in Blackpool, Kensington High Street is a nightmare compared to lovely fresh sea breezes in Blackpool...
I wonder what the life expectancy is in the rubbish dump compared to Gods own town? Certainly the environment in Watford is a lot better, having said that how much of life expectancy is driven by stress which is a direct result of environment both pollution and politics driven....
Yes there are discrepancies etc....... Even a prediction needs serious consideration e.g global warming temperatures and impact is a classic example... Are the worst floods in recorded history a result of global warming or something else ... etc etc. Clearly, as you pos,t pollution does impact health and we need to be much better at managing it..... and in cities I guess the internal combustion engine is the biggest cause..
Are humans driving evolution in animals? By Prof Adam Hart University of Gloucestershire 2 February 2016 From the section Science & Environment please log in to view this image Bigger fish are preferentially removed from the sea, enabling genes for "smallness" to prosper Are humans inadvertently driving evolution in other species? Mounting evidence suggests activities such as commercial fishing, angling and hunting, along with the use of pesticides and antibiotics, are leading to dramatic evolutionary changes. Sitting down to a roast chicken dinner doesn't seem like an obvious opportunity to consider evolution. But it is. Think about it: those big tasty carrots, that plump, tender chicken and those handsome potatoes all differ markedly from their natural ancestors. A wild carrot is barely more than a slightly enlarged purple tap-root and red jungle fowl certainly don't have the extravagant cleavages found on modern broiler chickens. The intentional selection of the qualities we like (such as flavour and size) in domesticated livestock and cultivated crops has led to descendent animals and plants that differ genetically from their ancestors. This change in gene frequency is evolution, and in this case has come about by a process called artificial selection. Natural selection is basically the same process. The difference is that instead of humans selecting individuals to breed, natural selection pressures such as predation, or the reluctance of females to mate with lower quality males, cause some individuals in a population to prosper and produce offspring while others fare poorly, leaving fewer offspring. If the trait that caused the parents to prosper has a genetic basis, then the offspring will inherit that trait and likewise prosper, changing the frequency of genes in the population. please log in to view this image Cultivated crops differ markedly from their natural ancestors Not all human selection pressures are as intentional as those imposed by plant and animal breeders. Recent research is revealing that many of our activities exert significant unintentional selection on organisms. Such "unnatural selection", as it has been termed, is causing evolution in those populations as the inevitable logic of Darwinian selection kicks in. Perhaps the best and most important example of unintentional evolution arising from our activity is antibiotic resistance. Antibiotics impose an immense selection pressure on bacteria and there is a huge advantage to any that can resist. Likewise, pesticides select for pesticide resistance. Some well understood examples of unnatural selection and evolution come from commercial fisheries. It is the larger fish that are usually targeted and those that remain are consequently smaller. But crucially this effect isn't just a demographic change. Dr Eric Palkovacs from the University of California Santa Cruz explains: "We have removed the large fish and that has a direct effect on the size structure of a population. Subsequent populations will feel that impact because those smaller fish contribute more genes to the population." In other words, the genes for "smallness" prosper while genes for "largeness" are selectively removed by fishing. Not only are the fish evolving to be smaller but they also are evolving to become sexually mature at a younger age. This is because those fish that have genes causing later maturity are likely to be harvested before they have the chance to breed, removing those genes from the population. please log in to view this image Urbanization selects for species able to tolerate the environments we create The selection pressure and evolution caused by fishing can have wider ecosystem consequences. Atlantic cod that used to be several metres long are now only a metre or so, which, points out Palkovacs, means "we basically have an organism that once was top predator in the system and now serves as prey to other organisms". Our relentless pursuit of the biggest individuals is causing evolutionary change in another harvested species; big horn sheep living on the appropriately named Ram Mountain in Alberta, Canada. Trophy hunters pay large sums to hunt these animals and they are after the biggest and most impressive males. Big males with big horns can fight successfully against other males and thereby mate with far more females than smaller males with less impressive horns. Professor David Coltman, at the University of Alberta, and colleagues have been studying the sheep on Ram Mountain for over 40 years, following individuals throughout their lives. The males grow their horns quite quickly when they're young, but a successful ram has to live long enough to become socially dominant. Once he does, those big horns pay off and he can have a lot of offspring. Hunters set up a strong selection pressure on these big males. Suddenly the advantages of being big (more mates, more offspring) are countered by a rather big disadvantage (being shot and mounted on a wall). please log in to view this image Hunting has exerted a strong selection pressure on big horn sheep This pressure is leading to smaller horns but it's not just that there are more smaller-horned males around because the larger-horned males are being removed. As in fisheries, hunting is causing evolutionary changes in the genetic make-up of the population, in this case resetting the baseline of horn size to a lower level. Prof Coltman explains: "The crux here is that the horns develop to the length where they can be legally harvested several years before they achieve social dominance. So in effect they're being harvested from the population before they can reproduce and pass their genes on." As a consequence, big horn sheep horns have evolved to be as much as 25% smaller. When we fish and hunt we aren't acting like natural predators. We are relentless, ruthlessly efficient "super predators" taking out the biggest and best. Similarly, when we change the environment we do so on a grand scale. Urbanization continues apace and selects for species able to tolerate the environments we create. At a global scale we are causing climate change that imposes further selection pressures that we still don't fully understand. It seems that virtually everything we do can have an accidental evolutionary consequence and scientists are already devising evolutionarily sustainable management plans for harvested resources. This is just as well, because if we aren't prudent in managing our unnatural selection pressures we will be paying a "Darwinian debt" for generations to come.
Future generations will look back on us and be shocked/disgusted by what we've done to this planet... Unless the right-wing get their way and we just kill ourselves before then...
Britain risks becoming the “dirty man of Europe” again with filthy beaches, foul air and weak conservation laws if it leaves the European Union, a group of leading environmentalists warned on Wednesday. The steering committee of the new E4E (Environmentalists for Europe) group includes former ministers, a former EU commissioner and a former head of the Environment Agency. It will work with green groups to persuade people that leaving the EU could set back the UK’s nature protection and prevention of pollution many years. The UK’s referendum on EU membership may come as soon as June. “The EU has a strong track record of tangible environmental improvement,” said Green party MP Caroline Lucas, a former MEP and a member of the group that launched on Wednesday. “It was the EU’s political decision in 1990 to cap emissions of greenhouse gases by 2000 that formed the cornerstone of the 1992 UN climate convention. “Britons have the EU to thank for [many of the] protections we have in place. It’s EU standards on air pollution that are forcing the government to clean up its act and key EU rules on healthy rivers, clean beaches and wildlife conservation have had a very positive effect,” she said. E4E co-chair Baroness Young, a former chair of English Nature and chief executive of the Environment Agency, said: “The environment doesn’t stop at country borders and UK air and water quality depends on agreement with our European neighbours on high standards. Europe’s environmental policy has grown to become the core framework in most areas of environmental policy.” The green vote, which stretches across political parties and collectively represents up to 7 million people, has traditionally wanted strong European pollution and conservation rules. But, says E4E, in its mission statement, “far too often environmental issues have been brushed aside by national parliaments”. Craig Bennett, director of Friends of the Earth and also part of E4E, said: “As a boy, trips to the coast were often spoiled by filthy beaches and sewage-filled seas. The prevalence of acid rain won us the title of ‘dirty man of Europe’. Thanks to EU action, this now a thing of the past. The UK cannot win the battles of the future - against climate change, air pollution and the destruction of the natural world - on its own.” Britain was dubbed “the dirty man of Europe” after it joined the EU in 1973 because it was the only country in western Europe that failed to control pollution from cars, power stations and farming, tried to undermine European pesticide controls, and evaded nitrate regulations and bathing water directives. Legal pressure and the threat of unlimited fines forced it to clean up its act, but it still breaches laws on air pollution and water quality. “A Britain outside the EU could in theory follow Norway and set high environmental standards,” said Stephen Tindale, a former head of Greenpeace who is not part of the group. “But most UK politicians regard them as ‘green frippery’. In practice, a UK outside the EU would be much more likely to return to being ‘the dirty man of Europe’.” Former EU environment commissioner Stanley Johnson, a co-chair of the E4E group, said: “By being in [the EU], Britain benefits from environmental legislation and funding not only for the fight against climate change and pollution and in its efforts to preserve nature and wildlife, but also through the creation of jobs and financing for research and development here at home.” “I personally believe that our country’s greatest resource – its nature – will be better protected and better preserved for future generations if we remain an active, full, partner within Europe,” he said. “It is European directives which have forced the sewage out of Britain’s bathing waters and the acid rain out of Britain’s atmosphere; which are getting rid of the most dangerous chemicals in our environment and the carbon pollution of our motor vehicles; which are pushing the clean-up of our rivers and the switch to renewable energy; and which, of course, are watching over our wildlife, and that of the rest of Europe,” said nature author and journalist Michael McCarthy, also part of E4E. Other members of the E4E steering committee include Lord Deben, chair of the UK Climate Change Committee which advises the government, former environment minister Richard Benyon MP, Matthew Spencer, director of the Green Alliance and conservationist and comedian Bill Oddie.
Oh dear, yesterday MEP's failed to vote for stronger controls on NOX emissions. So much for being in the EU means being cleaner! Looks like that cut and paste from The Guardian was a bit of a waste of time..
So all the examples of the EU imposing laws on safeguarding the environment mean nothing because one law didn't pass? Those are real examples. Lots of laws don't pass, it doesn't negate all the positive work that's been done. That doesn't suit your agenda though... I pasted the article because I thought it was interesting and relevant to the thread. Feel free to ignore it if you have nothing to debate.
For me the jury is still out on the issue of the EU. and environmentalism. Some countries would improve through membership (and the necessary environmental controls) eg. Russia. Other countries have rules which are more stringent than the EU. eg. Switzerland, which would become more of a 'polluter' if they joined. An example of this is that Switzerland (through its' non membership) is able to insist that all freight which is in transit through the country goes by rail. Austria cannot do this (because of the freedom of freight movement in the EU.) which creates a large environmental problem for the Brenner Pass. It was also the indecent way in which the EU. has pushed through the TTIP agreement without real debate and without the support of the electorate. Certainly the English Green Party is also sceptical of EU. membership. The EU. can be a source for environmental progress but it is not there yet.
I fully agree on the risk of TTIP, but I'd rather we signed up to something that forced our government to act rather than leave them to their own devices. Call Me Dave isn't fond of 'green crap' as he phrased it so eloquently, so it's good to have a buffer. The EU has many flaws, but I still think we're better off in than out.. The presence of so many dodgy parties as MEPs does concern me though...And on TTIP, the Tories would instantly sign up to it even if we did leave, so I don't see that as a valid reason for Brexit.
