Pollution Recovery

It may depend on how one measures the pollution. Is CO2 pollution? Some will say yes, some will say no.

The main point is not which pollution, but is any pollution...

But I don't see how a local problem like city pollution has a significant impact on the overall life expectancy of the Earth. Greenhouse gases however, are thought to be causing the end of the world. Is that where the "12 years" comes from?

Certainly, local pollution has an impact on the health of those living and working in the cities.

Say what now?

All of the polluted cities/nations are being lobbied to reduce their emissions and made some commitment to do so under international agreements.

The reason the US is said to have a greater responsibility than other nations, is that the effects of CO2 are cumulative over time. So the US has been contributing more emissions over time, while China is the bigger emitter at this point in time. Those past emissions are still contributing to the problem because of CO2's long term persistence in the atmosphere.

Compare the figures for emissions over time with those for present emissions:

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/24/18512804/climate-change-united-states-china-emissions

Good factual answer. GA from me.

London has been industrialized since the early-1880's, where much of the cotton was woven into various fabrics in their already-polluting linen mills, etc., hence their (endearing?....) ''soot'', while the U.S. was still, largely, an agricultural economy... (i.e.: the U.S. was not the first nation to ''industrialize''...)

1. I'd love to see these studies. I'm sure what you are saying is true, but you should provide these for our own examination.

2. It isn't a surprise that zero U.S. (or 'western') countries have no top-polluting cities. Generally, we know how harmful polluting can be and have the resources to prevent it for the most part.

3. I don't see any relevance to (our?) 'media' lobbying these foreign cities. Also, what is the scope of 'media'? Are movies supposed to convey a message to Cairo of "Give a hoot.." Are [credible] U.S. journalists supposed to expose this? To what effect?

4. Focusing on cities is near-sighted. Pollution happens in the countryside too.

5. Your punctuation actively makes its harder to understand your post.

https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/06/03/28-most-polluted-cities-in-the-world/

The 2.5 micron measurement makes sense in the city context. Soot and other particulates leading to respiratory problems. I am glad we no longer have those problems to any large degree here in the U.S. Even diesel trucks with the EPA2010 standards burn clean. No diesel smell, no sooty exhaust. The DEF (diesel exhaust fluid) is a pain but I believe worth it.

Another good, factual answer. Another GA from me...

Let's see: 85 divided by 18 is about 4.722, which implies that all of the ''28 most polluted cities of the world'' are more than 4.7 times more polluted than Bakersfield...

That's nearly a half an order-of-magnitude difference, minimum...

Why, then, do the (talking heads) of (popular media) insist on taking (potshots) at cities, etc., only in the U.S.? ...

Because it gets attention, headlines, and temporary ratings increases, without actually improving very much for very long, if at all...

The talking heads are not employed to improve anything, that's not their job....Their job is to create controversy and yes drive ratings, which increases revenues...You seem to be barking up the wrong tree....That cat is in the government tree, the EPA...and they work for this country, not sovereign nations that have their own form of EPA's to sort out these problems...

It's more entertainment than news...

...and we the (consumers) of such infotainment are thusly entertained, and distracted...

...and pollution levels creep higher...

...is that not a form of complicity between news persons and increasing pollution?...

What increasing pollution are we unaware of ??

40 in Beltsville, MD which is the closest sensor to Annapolis. But Beltsville is also closer to Wash D.C. and the beltway so I would expect a bit more pollution than Annapolis right on the bay.

Pollution is subjective.

the US has a very high consumption per capita, buying goods from countries like China. China manufactures products the US and other industrialised countries used to make themselves. So now we have a situation where the dirty stuff happens in one country but the cause (over-consumption) happens in another.

You could say Beijing is pretty polluted, and it is. But some of the particulates are Mongolian dust, a problem not man-made and been around for millennia. I have been in the Netherlands and seen cars coated in Saharan dust. Are people to blame for this, no!

Dare I say it, a weak economy is the best thing for the environment as consumption goes down.

Change takes money, it's expensive, even if you have the political will, without the money, society will take the cheaper route....so no, a weak economy is not good for the environment...no available money, no changes....You must be growing to change direction...

mainstream media lies

Here's some news about a hoax for you:

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a28636123/exxonmobil-lawsuit-climage-change-new-york/

This thread is IMO sanctimonius/disingenuous...
The statistics are a snapshot just looking at cities, not manufacturing, foreign policy etc...
BUT
The big point is, it is one world... it's no good whining "It's not me it's them" If every one adopts that attitude we'd get nowhere.
America professes to be a world leader... well as a leader there are obligations to act responsibly rather than just see how much you can screw out of the rest of the world.
Dropping out of the climate change agreement and the Iran nuclear deal are two examples of being counterproductive.
Yes of course other countries need to step up... but if America and the UK and the other developed countries don't then they can justifiably say why should we bother.
Bear in mind The UK, America and much of Europe had the benefit of the industrial revolution without any concessions to pollution, health and safety or even basic morality in many cases (e.g slavery).
Del

Very convenient, selective use of statistics...How about the 2018 spike in CO2 ?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/climate/greenhouse-gas-emissions-increase.html
Del

Haha you really had to mine for that one, an estimate by some Chinese front company...I'll wait for the hard data thank you...Besides we don't expect a smooth downward slope in ghg's even if there is an occasional uptick the trend is down...

The New York Times??? Are you serious?

As of 2017, world-wide, it looks like the (reducers) were increasingly losing to the (increasers)...

How long can that go on?...

Does the last coughing, gagging, screaming one really ''win'' the debate?...

As per post #18, the U.S. is clearly leading the (reducers) but they are still out-performed, and out-numbered, by the (increasers)...

If the U.S. produced zero parts-per-zillion pollutants, in all categories, the Earth's days would still be numbered because of the eventual, cummulative, net-effect of the (increasers)...

How big does the writing-on-the-wall have to get?...

Sorry if the New York Times is some how not a serious source ...
I'm not to know that from this side of the pond!
I just did a google source for some more recent data (I didn't have to "mine" for it).
Is the EIA acceptable?
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=38133
Del

Likely from economic and population growth...You want to make a comparison , make it apples to apples.....the per capita is still dropping...

Hmmm, I'm a little confused.
I've looked further into the pedigree of the New York Times. See link below and other sources, and it seems to be fairly well respected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times
Has this forum degenerated into another place where information not conforming to ones personal opinions is automatically dismissed as "fake news"?
If so, it is rather sad.
I would also question the validity of the whole thread...
It is not about "pollution Recovery" at all.
I'm not actually sure what its purpose is? To make "us" feel better than "them"?
Del

This says it all...

https://www.amazon.com/Gray-Lady-Down-Decline-America/dp/1594034869

The story...

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/why-the-left-cant-stand-the-new-york-times.php

The first link is a good nutshell answer. The second is one person's opinion and certainly off the mark, as NYT has been one of the left's puppets for decades.

..."Conversely, the New York Times is the flagship publication for liberal triumphalism; it holds the line of Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History”—the notion that all serious ideological conflict crashed to a halt with the suspension of the Cold War, with very little at stake in future political disputes beyond regional trade accords and fine-tuning of currency regimes."...

That's the problem the NYT is stuck in the mindset that liberalism has triumphed over conservatism, even after Pres.Trump was elected, and have since been in denial, and is drifting further from reality every day....

..."Adding insult to injury, the Gray Lady is suddenly the object of constant scorn from the nation’s highest office. Having spent eight years in the comfortable favor of Barack Obama, a position so secure that they faced zero consequences for such glaring moral and journalistic failings as the endorsement of the Iraq War, the “Failing New York Times” and its fellows now thrash in fury at their sudden irrelevance to these crude new political elites. The Times is unable to conceive of a world in which it was so very wrong, and unable to cope with a political administration that speaks of it with utter contempt. Not only has it lost the king’s ear, it is finding itself entirely incapable of appealing to the peasants; the cynical and transparent hit pieces on Bernie Sanders betray the paper’s general contempt for mass politics."...

..."In 2018, the average weekday circulation of the New York Times was 487 thousand copies. This marks a significant drop from over 1.03 million a decade earlier and continues the downward trend which has been evident for the last few years....

https://www.statista.com/statistics/273503/average-paid-weekday-circulation-of-the-new-york-times/

washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/17/new-york-times-editor-admits-paper-is-very-very-very-biased

"Pollution" is merely a substance in the wrong place.

Like a weed is a plant in the wrong place?

Quite.

Another says of the top 10 India has 9.

However, another source says that C0₂ emissions per capita (which is surely a more sensible measurement as far as the "world" is concerned) shows India at 1.7 tons/capita and the USA at 16.5.

I disagree. The total output of a country is what matters. The atmosphere knows nothing about per capita.

Not sure it knows too much about countries either. I just think that per capita shows a statistically more realistic view of what each one of us is doing in whichever country we are.