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Comment by rdelpret | Hacker News Reader

Holy smokes. I thought 160 AQI from wildfires was bad. They are reporting highs of 600. It’s been a good run, earth.

And it's like that for large parts of the winter every year in Delhi. When I was there in Jan/Feb 2019 I remember checking the AQI at night and it was always 450-600. When I got back and all my friends/co-workers in the bay were freaking out that year about wildfires and AQIs of 160 you realize you get desensitized to it. I just kept thinking back to Delhi and how 160 would have been a relief after sleeping in an old house in Hauz Khas with no air filtration.

Also, it's wild to take off from Delhi in an airplane with smoke that thick -- you go from grey, smokey, low visibility to a bright blue sun shining sky. You just look down and see an orb of smoke engulfing the city.

This reminds me of visiting LA in the 80s. Similar shroud of smog encapsulating the city.

It can change for the better, but it needs people that believe that future is possible and worth fighting for.

On multiple occasions Delhi has exceeded 999, which is the maximum reading on the government monitors. I recall being there with 1000+ AQI levels. It's extremely saddening as most have no choice but to endure the toxic air.

It a local condition caused primarily by farmers burning their fields coupled with the geography of the area.

However, the continuing situation of one group choosing to cause mass suffering for others out of an economic choice and no one can or will do anything about it feels a lot like one example of a global condition that doesn't bode well for the species/planet.

India has a pretty easy fix here, pass air quality laws with an enforcement mechanism at the federal level. It's internal to their borders, pretty different from a global issue that requires many types of governments and non-governmental entities to coordinate and make tradeoffs.

My thesis is, pick (nearly) any border in the world and you will find something like this happening inside of it, and that's the global condition that doesn't bode well. If we can't figure things out within borders, how are we to do it at the global scale, which as you point out is much harder?

Plenty of countries and localities have fixes in place for internal air quality issues. We've largely solved this in the US. Inida also has a lot of wood burning and 2-stroke engine vehicles. They have a lot of low hanging fruit here if they prioritize it. Dealing with atmospheric Co2 is a much bigger and thornier problem.

The US has largely solved the air quality problem, but the situation of water rights in the west feels to me like it carries the same tones of OP story.

Not really. The Colorado River Compact is a special monster that allocated more water than exists on average in the river.

A pretty easy fix you say? You think they haven’t tried to fix it? Turns out that they also have to deal with different types of governments and non-governmental entities to coordinate and make trade offs. The central government simply lacks the capacity to overcome the obstacles.

“Why doesn’t the central government just…” inevitably is answered with “They can’t.”

If Richard Nixon of all people could establish the EPA in 1970 against economic and ideological headwinds then I'm sure India can replicate that success.

And then inevitably Farmers will protest, Western media will portray it as some popular uprising instead of a special interest group lobbying against the public good.

It has happened before

India already has air quality laws. And an enforcement mechanism.

The issue is that local politicians are preventing the enforcement of those laws because the temporary economic inconvenience to their voting base (farmers) trumps the health concerns of people in another state.

And this is compounded by the economic reality of farming in much of Indian: in many years, the cost of chipping the plant remains, or even just preparing them to be chipped (assuming service is provided for free by government) instead of simply burning them can push many farmers into bankruptcy.

Lots of other countries have solved this and similar problems, I doubt it is beyond the capabilities of people in India to do the same. In 1970 Nixon one of America's more questionable executives established the EPA by reorganizing and joining a bunch of disparate environment related agencies under a broader remit. The requisite legislation that gave it teeth like the Clean Air Act were opposed by powerful interests, but it still got done. I'm confident the Indian government could do the same if enough people wanted to.

>India

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