A five-second video posted on r/Mumbai, taken while going over a Mumbai bridge, showed the extent of India's air quality problem. The air in the video is so thick with pollution that almost nothing of the city can be seen. Unlike the air, the point was abundantly clear: Air pollution is reaching a crisis point in the world's most populous nation. The clip was captioned: "The state of the air in our city."
The comments included dismay and anger. A commenter who made the same journey recently said, "[I] could barely see the worli side of the city." Worli is a neighborhood on the western side of Mumbai.
One commenter mentioned that air pollution can cause considerable health issues. "The Latest AQI [air quality index] shows that this pollution is equal to smoking 108 cigarettes each month."
As the thread's discussion shows, air pollution is a serious problem in India. A CNN report noted that 83 of the 100 most polluted cities in the world are in India. The Indian subcontinent is heavily overrepresented in IQAir's annual report. India's neighbors, Pakistan and Bangladesh, rank even higher. These nations have particulate matter scores 50 times to 90 times higher than the World Health Organization's guidelines.
A significant part of the problem is that India still draws most of its energy from coal, which is the most polluting fossil fuel, per ClientEarth. As reported by Reuters, despite major advances in renewable energy, coal is still king, unlike other countries that are phasing it out. As India undergoes a construction boom, per Business Wire, many worry that the air quality problem could worsen. While India has made some strides to strengthen regulations, as Enhesa reported, the prevailing feeling in the thread was that the government is not going nearly far enough.
One commenter sarcastically quipped, "We need to build more skyscrapers to tackle this issue." Another commenter added, "It's hazy 24/7. I don't see any seriousness from govt to spread awareness on this topic."
One comment was more direct, saying, "Disgusting, shame to anyone who is in power and can actually do something about this."
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