Some US cities regress while Europe starts charging polluters
As smog worsens, green fees on filthy motors moves ahead
| We trim, blend, and append three 2008 articles: (1) “State of the Air 2008” by the American Lung Association; (2) “Tree-lined streets 'cut asthma'” by the BBC, May 1; and (3) “Environmental Cost of Shipping Groceries Around the World” by Elisabeth Rosenthal in the New York Times, April 26. |
ALA: Almost 125 million Americans -- two of every five people in the US -- live in counties that have unhealthful levels of either ozone or particle pollution. Some cities -- notably Los Angeles and Houston -- cut ozone and particle pollution. Many other cities slowed or reversed gains made earlier in the decade. For the first time, a city outside of California -- Pittsburgh -- topped a list of the most polluted cities.
International shipping also produces large amounts of air pollution. Emissions from these engines seriously worsen national ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur oxide, and particle pollution levels, especially in ports such as Seattle, Oakland, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and New York. Both foreign-flagged as well as US ships must be required to use much cleaner fuels and engines.
JJS: A more effective method than mandating less pollution is to auction off emission permits, a tact that Europe is taking. Planting more trees is how New York plans to improve urban air.
BBC: US rates of childhood asthma soared 50% between 1980 and 2000, with particularly high rates in poor, urban communities. In New York City, 9% of young children have asthma, which is the leading cause of admission to hospital among children under 15. Yet asthma rates among children aged four and five fell by 25% for every extra 343 trees per square kilometer; children who live on tree-lined streets are put at lower risk.
JJS: While planting more trees would likely help, doing so would also make the shaded residences more livable and the locations more desirable, pushing up their site value. That gentrifies the neighborhood, unless the land rent is recovered, often via taxes, and shared, as by paying residents a dividend and/or by lowering other taxes. With taxing locations, another useful levy is taxing pollution, a reform further along in Europe, which is targeting shippers.
Rosenthal: Better transportation networks have reduced the time required to ship food. Improved roads in Africa mean goods go from farms to stores in Europe in 4 days, compared with 10 days not too many years ago.
And with far cheaper labor costs in African nations, Morocco and Egypt have displaced Spain in just a few seasons as important suppliers of tomatoes and salad greens to central Europe.
Some shipping defies logic:
- * Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale.
* Argentine lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Citrus Coast of Spain, as local lemons rot on the ground.
* Britain imports -- and exports -- 15,000 tons of waffles a year, and similarly exchanges 20 tons of bottled water with Australia.
Britain, with its short growing season and powerful supermarket chains, imports 95% of its fruit and more than half of its vegetables; food accounts for 25% of truck shipments in Britain. The European Union, the world’s leading food importer, has increased imports 20% in the last five years. The value of fresh fruit and vegetables imported by the United States, in second place, nearly doubled from 2000 to 2006.
The movable feast comes at a cost: pollution. Besides contaminating air and water, transported foods also require layers of packaging and, in the case of perishable food, refrigeration, both of which take energy.
This year the European Commission announced that by 2012 all freight-carrying flights into and out of the European Union would have to purchase permits for the pollution they emit. The commission is negotiating with the global shipping organization, the International Maritime Organization, over various alternatives to reduce greenhouse gases.
Some foods that travel long distances may actually have an environmental advantage over local products. Some studies have shown that shipping fresh apples, onions, and lamb from New Zealand might produce lower emissions than producing the goods in Europe, where -- for example -- storing apples for months would require refrigeration. But those studies were done in New Zealand.
JJS: With imposing charges on polluters, let’s not forget to remove subsidies from beneath polluters. Let’s not give any more bailouts to airlines or shipping companies; instead, charge full market value for landing slots at airports and docking slots in seaports. Perhaps most basic, let’s not build and maintain roads with money from the general fund; instead, pay off road bonds with taxes on nearby land values and pay for maintenance from revenue generated by taxing vehicles. While these charges for taking value are fair and effective in their own right, they’re made more palatable by removing taxes for making value -- income, sales, buildings -- similarly fair and effective in its own right.
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Jeffery J. Smith runs the Forum on Geonomics.
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Also see: The Green Tax Shift Makes Further Gains
Carbon Credits: False Absolution
One Sky, Many Owners |
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