Cut car numbers for cleaner cities - Air pollution warning from WHO

THE World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that air pollution in cities has become so toxic that it represents one of the “biggest public health issues” facing the world. Air pollution is linked to cardiovascular disease and a litany of illnesses. Last year the WHO suggested that seven million, or one-in-eight, premature deaths were linked to air pollution.

The situation has become so critical that a growing number of cities — stretching from Paris and London to India — are considering banning, or have banned, diesel vehicles.

Paris will ban diesel cars from the French capital by 2020. Oslo, with commendable big-picture thinking, is working on a plan that could make a complete city-centre car ban possible by 2050. Mardid is on a similar trajectory and it is planned to completely pedestrianise central Madrid in the next five years. Milan discourages private car use by offering free public transit vouchers to commuters who leave their vehicles at home. In Copenhagen over half of the city’s population cycles to work every day — nine times more bicycle commuters than in Portland, Oregon, the city with the most bicycle commuters in America. It seems likely that Irish figures for commuting cyclists would be closer to the American figure than the Danish norm.

The recent emissions scandal can only add momentum to this trend — a trend we should join enthusiastically before an opportunity becomes, like the floods, a crisis.