{"id":6500,"date":"2019-11-11T14:15:42","date_gmt":"2019-11-11T11:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6500"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:40","slug":"the-politics-of-air-pollution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/11\/11\/the-politics-of-air-pollution\/","title":{"rendered":"The Politics of Air Pollution"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You\ncan smell and taste pollution the moment you walk out of the door. Even on a\nclear day, there is this poisonous tang in the air. You know it is damaging\nyour health and your children’s health, but you feel helpless to do anything\nabout it. Every day it just gets worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dense,\ndirty air laced with grease best describes the atmosphere of most African\nstreets. Driving from one corner of this great continent to another and in no\ntime you will find surfaces lightly dusted, like a soft sprinkling of icing on\ncakes. Under the half-moons of fingernails, thick grime settles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nis a scene taken as typically African: polluted, bedraggled, unhealthy. Yet\nthis has only ever been made possible by the exploitation of Africa\u2019s people \u2013\nthe bedrock of European development. Today the exploitation continues. In a\nrecent report, five west African countries, Nigeria included, announced plans\nto end the practice of European oil companies and traders exporting \u2018African\nquality\u201d diesel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dirty\nfuel has earned the name because it is imported diesel with Sulphur levels as\nhigh as 3,000 parts per million. To be clear, African quality fuel is fuel not\nfit for humans. Racism has always been about the sanctioning of exploitation.\nHow else can one justify one nation siphoning the wealth of another thousand of\nmiles away if not by believing \u201cthose people\u201d are inferior and thus deserving\nof servitude?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today,\nvictims of pollution are global, although to some extent this has always been\nthe case. The rich have not faced much danger as they are always protected. The\nmost vulnerable are those who cannot afford the posh kind of lifestyle. They\nare left to suffer at the mercy of the polluted air. The dynamics remain much\nthe same, with global capital able to exploit the 99% wherever they are with\nexceptional mercilessness reserved for those living in the ex-colonial\noutposts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\npoor have been paraded as social pariahs angered by extreme inequality whose\nrighteous rage has brought disaster upon us. Never mind that this is a lazy\noversimplification of the facts. Or that gross inequality like ours can only\ncontinue if we create a constantly fluctuating vision of the other to rally against,\ntogether. Whatever our class backgrounds, it is after all foundational to the\nnational makeup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Photo by Wired<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The\nfight against air pollution is not just a technological issue, but a\nsocial-economic and social-political challenge because of its unbalanced social\nimpacts on different population groups such as children, senior citizens and\npoor and marginalized people who either have limited adaptive or affordable\ncapacity. It is also about the contestations of interests between economic\ndevelopment and environmental sustainability, between urban and rural divides,\nbetween those who demand cleaner air and those who are to pay a big price for\nit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social\ninequalities (education, health, justice, social protection) impacts greatly on\nthe effects of air pollution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\nthe climate crisis escalates\u2026keeping quiet will not save the planet. It is an\nemergency. The pledge of each human being should be to give global heating,\nwildlife extinction and pollution the urgent attention and prominence they\ndemand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nproblems we face in the climate crisis are systematic and that fundamental\nsocietal change is needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can smell and taste pollution the moment you walk out of the door. Even on a clear day, there is this poisonous tang in the air. You know it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environmental-responsibility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}