Our Circular Eco Economy (I)

GodPovertyPollutionPakistanIndiaEnvironmentAir QualityUAEOur Circular Economy

Dec 18

From Pollution from America to India to Pakistan to the UAE to ~ Who is to Blame and Who Can Help?

Note: This group of five articles “Our Circular Eco Economy” are not an “I Know It All” series. They are articles to try to get people thinking more creatively about our future, planet, and people.

I went to MIT Sloan School of Management and Harvard Kennedy School of Government. I studied System Dynamics. Please send your insights, feedback, and ideas to me at ashleyheacock@gmail.com

Please share this article with anybody you think you could have an intelligent conversation with about these topics.

If you would like to be part of this initiative, I have plans to create Zoom spaces for us to communicate with each other, or Slack, or ideas that you all may have. Please email me at ashleyheacock@gmail.com if you would like to be part of this new project for our world!

Demonstration of Pollution’s Negative Karma being Spread from Country to Country:

Articles on the rampant pollution in Pakistan:

Lahore, the capital of Punjab and Pakistan’s second-largest city, on Sunday had its worst air quality ever recorded, prompting the government to shut all primary schools this week. In the days since, the city has been cloaked in toxic, eye-irritating smog. On Thursday, Lahore had the worst air quality of any city in the world, according to IQAir, a Swiss air quality monitoring company.

“The air feels thick, and it’s exhausting just to breathe,” Safdar Masih, 42, a gardener in Lahore, said on Thursday. Even with windows and doors shut, the smog had seeped into homes, he said.

The World Bank has said that air pollution shortens the average life expectancy of Pakistanis by 4.3 years and leads to losses equivalent to about 6.5 percent of the economy.

Typically, one would blame Pakistan and say they’re dumb. But, I’m an educated person, and thought this seemed atypical. It was confusing to me. So I did some research:

Aurangzeb said the fumes were “being carried by strong winds into Pakistan”.

“This cannot be solved without talks with India,” she said, adding that the provincial government would initiate such discussions through the foreign ministry.

Inhaling toxic air can have catastrophic health consequences, including strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and some respiratory diseases, according to the WHO.

Last month pupils were banned from outdoor exercise until January and school hours were adjusted to prevent children from travelling when pollution levels are the highest.

“As a mother, I am full of anxiety,” 42-year-old Lilly Mirza told AFP news agency.

“Last year was not this bad… Somebody needs to tell us what has happened. Did a pollution bomb explode somewhere?”

The United Arab Emirates Solution to Pakistan’s Problem

“Teams from the UAE, along with two planes, arrived here about 10 to 12 days ago. They used 48 flares to create the rain,” he said.

The UAE has increasingly used cloud seeding, sometimes referred to as artificial rain or blueskying, to create rain in the arid expanse of the country.

In the cloud-seeding process, silver iodide, a yellowish salt, is burned in clouds in a compound with acetone to encourage condensation to form as rain.

Naqvi reassured the public of the safety of the artificial rain, citing more than 1,000 annual missions by the UAE and similar technologies used in dozens of countries, including the United States, China and India.

Typically, one would then blame India and say they’re dumb for polluting Pakistan. But, I’m an educated person, and know that the factories in Asia are the ones producing all the goods for the world, especially American consumerism.

So, the Circular Eco Economy could go something like this:

From America (consumerism, I want more products)
to India (I will build it for you because we are poor, so lots of pollution due to industrialism)
to Pakistan (The wind carries the pollution to Pakistan, making the children incapable of even going to school)
to the UAE (Let’s blow chemicals up into the air to try to help)

So my question is: if this is coming from India: then, it is probably coming from consumerism, addiction, and greed in the United States, we the people who buy the products from Asia made in filthy petroleum factories that are then shipped to us in the US and we receive the products like nothing happened to the earth, air, water, or the people in Asia.

So, why do we talk just about countries, why not about regions, why not about who is buying the goods that are produced by petroleum pollution?

What is the effect of poor air in Asia?

The Environmental Research Group at Imperial College London published a review in April 2023 following decades of scientific research about air pollution.

The review found connections between air pollution and the health of newborn babies in the first weeks of life, low birth weight, miscarriages and stillbirths. It also found that early exposure to air pollution can hinder development.

According to the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) published by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) in August 2023, the average Indian’s life expectancy is reduced by 5.3 years due to PM2.5 pollution. In New Delhi, life expectancy is cut by 10 years.

The report found that an average Pakistani would live for 3.9 years longer if air quality met the WHO guidelines.

Growing industrialisation in South Asia in recent decades has driven an increase in pollutants emanating from factories, construction activity and vehicles in densely populated areas.

The problem becomes more severe in cooler autumn and winter months, as temperature inversion prevents a layer of warm air from rising and traps pollutants closer to the ground.

Rising air pollution can cut life expectancy by more than five years per person in South Asia, one of the world’s most polluted regions, according to a report published in August which flagged the growing burden of hazardous air on health.

Pakistan is responsible for less than 1 percent of global carbon emissions but is among the top 10 most climate-vulnerable nations.

What can be done to remedy South Asia’s air quality crisis?

The IQAir report recommends that governments invest in renewable energy initiatives, introduce incentives for cleaner vehicles, improve infrastructure to enable better pedestrian mobility and ban agricultural burning practices.

While interesting, it does not get into the dynamics of the Circular Eco Economy. Greed, materialism, consumerism. The US gets free of air pollution, while countries in Asia get saturated with it. Fair? or Not?

Then get this…

Now the UAE is playing God and disrupting Earthly patterns with spouting out random chemicals into the sky. How bad can this get? Are we sure this is safe? Let’s just blow things up into the air rather than face the hunger of consumerism we really need to face.

Wow ~ Circular Eco Economy Gone Wild?

New research found that fewer than 10 percent of countries and territories met World Health Organization guidelines for particulate matter pollution last year.

So, Who Can Help?

Read my next article on a possible solution: