TWC: New Delhi's Smog Is So Bad That Planes Can't Land

[China]

New Delhi's Smog Is So Bad That Planes Can't Land

 

Smog blanketing India's capital got so bad over the weekend that pilots couldn't see to land their planes at New Delhi's international airport.

 

Officials declared a public health emergency, and schools and colleges have been ordered to remain closed this week, CBS News reported.

 

Private cars can only be on the road on alternate days. Cars with odd-number license plates may drive on odd dates while even-numbered plates are allowed on even-numbered dates, The Associated Press reported.

 

"I have a headache every day I wake up. It's suffocating to breathe sometimes. And inflammation in the nostrils and all. And eyes also. Like it kind of burns," Ankusha Kushi, a student, told the AFP news agency.

 

Pollution levels have reached a three-year high. The air quality index in some parts of Delhi hit 900 on Sunday, The Guardian reported. At 7 a.m. Monday, Delhi's overall AQI was "severe" at 708, according to India Today. An AQI between 0-50 is considered "good," 51-100 is "satisfactory."

 

 

 

Click on the link for the full article and video

 

 

[Riggo-toni]

Must be from all the hookahs.

[twa]

2 minutes ago, Riggo-toni said:

Must be from all the hookahs.

 

Balderdash, sex doesn't cause smog.

[China]

5 minutes ago, Riggo-toni said:

Must be from all the hookahs.

 

What do prostitutes have to do with it?

 

Edit:  I see twa and I are thinking along the same lines.  As long as that doesn't carry over into politics.

Edited November 6 by China

[justice98]

How does a government not see this and think "uh, maybe we should kinda do something about this?"

 

It's like that Seinfeld Kenny Roger's Roasters episode. 

 

Seth: "That's not gonna be good for business." 

Jerry: "That's not gonna be good for anybody". 

[NoCalMike]

When it comes to smog/pollution.  You simply have to acknowledge the problem and do something about it and tell those who don't want to help fix the issue to get out of the way.  Smog in Los Angeles was borderline unbearable for a period of time until they decided enough was enough, yet today you'd never even know it was ever that bad.  

[abdcskins]

Too many people. The first solution would be to limit cars on the road and curb emissions, but ultimately people are ths source of the problem.

 

Overpopulation is the source of many of our problems. It is my #1 issue by far, and as far as I'm concerned there should be child limits in every country. It would be extremely hard to enforce, but I still would try.  I know there are other ways to get rid of smog, which is the issue in this case, but we need to start addressing the overpopulation issue, or else all our planet's resources will be gone in 200-300 years.

Edited November 6 by abdcskins

[China]

24 minutes ago, abdcskins said:

Too many people. The first solution would be to limit cars on the road and curb emissions, but ultimately people are ths source of the problem.

 

Overpopulation is the source of many of our problems. It is my #1 issue by far, and as far as I'm concerned there should be child limits in every country. It would be extremely hard to enforce, but I still would try.  I know there are other ways to get rid of smog, which is the issue in this case, but we need to start addressing the overpopulation issue, or else all our planet's resources will be gone in 200-300 years.

 

 

[CousinsCowgirl84]

Whatever happened to IFR??? Fake news.

[Destino]

3 hours ago, abdcskins said:

Too many people. The first solution would be to limit cars on the road and curb emissions, but ultimately people are ths source of the problem.

 

Overpopulation is the source of many of our problems. It is my #1 issue by far, and as far as I'm concerned there should be child limits in every country. It would be extremely hard to enforce, but I still would try.  I know there are other ways to get rid of smog, which is the issue in this case, but we need to start addressing the overpopulation issue, or else all our planet's resources will be gone in 200-300 years.

Much of the western world already has birth rates below replacement level. Where exactly would you seek to impose population controls and how would you do it?

[The Evil Genius]

Ban the Kama sutra.

[abdcskins]

56 minutes ago, Destino said:

Much of the western world already has birth rates below replacement level. Where exactly would you seek to impose population controls and how would you do it?

 

Very good question, and I'm not going to pretend that I have some outlined plan. I'd have to do some research. How did China do it? Did they jail families that had more than two children? That is what I am suggesting, heavy fines/taxes or jail time for couples that exceed the limit repeatedly. I believe it should be that serious. I think most crimes should have harsher penalties to be honest, that's for another topic.

 

What I'm suggesting is extremely pragmatic and goes against many people's morals and emotions. What I'm saying is leave your emotions out of it. Human life is not that precious. I would start by terminating pregnancies that have any sort of cognitive impairment. Interfering with people's lives is always a sensitive subject, but I believe radical steps must be taken to ensure the survival of our planet. I don't know why anyone would want to have more than two kids anyway. 

 

I would impose them everywhere. On a global scale, I would seek to increase women's education and hopefully empower them to pursue careers and be independent, so they aren't stuck at home having sex with a husband all the time and ending up procreating 6 kids. I would also advocate birth control and family planning in third world countries. I don't know the statistics, but how many countries don't even implement birth control in their culture?

 

We need less people, I think that is pretty clear. I forget the exact statistic, but I read that scientists say we have exceeded the global population by 250% or something like that. We are consuming like crazy. Plastic is a clear example of that. I don't think we will ever curb our consumption habits. We use electricity and water and an alarming rate. Unless we come up with some alternative energy sources, like tomorrow, this planet is doomed. 

Edited November 6 by abdcskins

[TryTheBeal!]

Won’t climate change and pollution handle that overpopulation for us?

 

Isnt this really a battle to see what part of the world can maintain their population as the inevitable consequences kick in?

 

Spoiler:  It ain’t gonna be India.

[NoCalMike]

 

[SkinInsite]

I would just kill off people ranked by their consumption. A village full of farmers in India isn't consuming 100th the resources some rich asshole private jetting it around the world. 

 

[Destino]

1 hour ago, abdcskins said:

Very good question, and I'm not going to pretend that I have some outlined plan. I'd have to do some research. How did China do it? Did they jail families that had more than two children? That is what I am suggesting, heavy fines/taxes or jail time for couples that exceed the limit repeatedly. I believe it should be that serious. I think most crimes should have harsher penalties to be honest, that's for another topic.

When you find yourself thinking "How did China do it" you should recognize this as a red flag.  This could never work in a free society. 

 

1 hour ago, abdcskins said:

What I'm suggesting is extremely pragmatic and goes against many people's morals and emotions.

This is another red flag. 

 

1 hour ago, abdcskins said:

Human life is not that precious.

All the red flags. 

 

1 hour ago, abdcskins said:

I would start by terminating pregnancies that have any sort of cognitive impairment.

Outside of the obvious issues that come with forcing abortions on people, the unintended consequence of this is that you would also be declaring that everyone with a cognitive impairment is unworthy of being alive.  Discrimination and hate crimes against these people would sky rocket as a result. 

 

1 hour ago, abdcskins said:

I would seek to increase women's education and hopefully empower them to pursue careers and be independent, so they aren't stuck at home having sex with a husband all the time and ending up procreating 6 kids.

Equating stay at home parenting with failure, the literal result of lacking education, and trying to do away with it is deeply insulting and IMO wrong minded.  A stay at home parent is better for children and possibly a sign of a fairer economy where more people can afford to choose this option. 

 

It just shouldn't be women that always end up staying at home. 

 

1 hour ago, abdcskins said:

I would also advocate birth control and family planning in third world countries. I don't know the statistics, but how many countries don't even implement birth control in their culture?

This is a good idea. 

 

 

3 minutes ago, SkinInsite said:

I would just kill off people ranked by their consumption. A village full of farmers in India isn't consuming 100th the resources some rich asshole private jetting it around the world.

So we're back to throwing people into volcanoes, but without the boring volunteering part. 

[abdcskins]

1 hour ago, Destino said:

Equating stay at home parenting with failure, the literal result of lacking education, and trying to do away with it is deeply insulting and IMO wrong minded.  A stay at home parent is better for children and possibly a sign of a fairer economy where more people can afford to choose this option. 

 

It just shouldn't be women that always end up staying at home. 

 

I wasn't saying women staying at home was a failure. I was saying that many women, specifically in third world countries, receive little to no education, and thereby feel attached emotionally and financially to their husbands, giving them little to no opportunity to pursue goals or careers of their own. If they were empowered to go out and pursue their own goals, perhaps they wouldn't feel obligated to get pregnant and be a stay at home with multiple children to raise.

 

I see and pretty much agree with everything else you said. However, I would question why we consider human life to be so valuable. What makes human life better than any other life? It may be a red flag to you, but for me it is a philosophical question that should be examined closer. Is every human life precious? I just read a Harriet McBryde Johnson article in class so this subject is fresh in my mind.

 

Sorry China for hijacking the thread, I didn't intend for it. I see the word smog and have an emotional reaction.

[Destino]

1 hour ago, abdcskins said:

However, I would question why we consider human life to be so valuable.

Because we are human and we have an interest in the answer. 

 

Quote

What makes human life better than any other life?

Nothing, for all we know bald eagles mating in the sky are much happier than the anxiety riddled apes pondering such questions.  Better is hard to quantify and ultimately irrelevant.  We are human, we do not have the option to join another team. (yet)

 

Quote

It may be a red flag to you, but for me it is a philosophical question that should be examined closer.

So long as it remains an academic discussion, sure.  When it escapes into the wider world it transforms into the root of major evils.  Genocide, slavery, systemic oppression of every kind.  All of these evils are nested in the idea that some people are inherently better, and thus deserving of greater rights and respect than others. 

 

Quote

Is every human life precious? I just read a Harriet McBryde Johnson article in class so this subject is fresh in my mind.

Would that be about her debate with Peter Singer?  I vaguely remember being horrified by their ghoulish exchange.  Their is something very unnerving about a person able to smile and make nice with someone while arguing that they shouldn't have been allowed to live.  I can't help but imagine the outcome of people like that ever managing to ascend into positions of power, though I suspect history books are already filled with examples of exactly how that plays out. 

 

[China]

1 hour ago, abdcskins said:

 

I wasn't saying women staying at home was a failure. I was saying that many women, specifically in third world countries, receive little to no education, and thereby feel attached emotionally and financially to their husbands, giving them little to no opportunity to pursue goals or careers of their own. If they were empowered to go out and pursue their own goals, perhaps they wouldn't feel obligated to get pregnant and be a stay at home with multiple children to raise.

 

I see and pretty much agree with everything else you said. However, I would question why we consider human life to be so valuable. What makes human life better than any other life? It may be a red flag to you, but for me it is a philosophical question that should be examined closer. Is every human life precious? I just read a Harriet McBryde Johnson article in class so this subject is fresh in my mind.

 

Sorry China for hijacking the thread, I didn't intend for it. I see the word smog and have an emotional reaction.

 

'Barometer of despair': Birthrate falls as millennials fear climate apocalypse

 

Marisa Polowitz loves children. She worked as a nanny before embarking on a career in technology, and she considers herself a “nurturing person.” Now 34, she long assumed she would become a parent.

 

But as she looks around at her life — in Nashville, where she lives, in the nation and the world — she has found herself wondering “do I want to have a kid who I hand this world off to?” Rather than visions of raising up children, educating and guiding them, Polowitz’s thoughts — “nightmares,” she says — are of having to protect that child in a world “devastated by the climate disaster.”

 

“Within the past couple of years, I have started to feel this ambient existential dread about the state of things,” she says.

 

She is not the only one. Ask a millennial, ages 23 to 38, and you find the doubts. The U.S. birthrate is currently at its lowest in 32 years, with 2018 being the fourth consecutive year of decline. Usually births increase at times of economic stability, so these latest numbers have led demographers to wonder what else is on prospective parents’ minds.

“The birthrate is a barometer of despair,” Dowell Myers, who studies this data at the University of Southern California, concluded when the latest numbers were released earlier this year. “Not a whole lot of things are going good, and that’s haunting young people.”

 

On the list of “not good things” (lack of long-term job security, mountains of debt, the likelihood today’s children will not do as well economically as their parents), the climate crisis, with its specter of droughts, famines, fires and floods, is near the top. A poll by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation in September found that 68 percent of respondents ages 18-29 say they are “afraid” of the effects of climate change, and 63 percent of teen respondents believe future generations will be harmed a great deal.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[TryTheBeal!]

I can think of one really powerful and proven way to lower the birthrate...for-profit medical care.

[China]

Despite Itchy Eyes, Tourists Flock to Taj Mahal

 

AGRA, India (AFP) — Even with pollution cloaking northern India, visitors are still thronging the Taj Mahal, the shining marble mausoleum south of Delhi.

 

Every year around eight million people — mostly domestic tourists — visit the monument, built by a 17th-century Mughal emperor for his wife.

 

On Tuesday, with smog levels many times maximum levels, only a few of the roughly 10,000 daily visitors wore pollution masks, and most of them were foreigners.

 

Gildas Courtois, a French visitor, complained that he was coughing, his nose was running and that his eyes were sore.

 

“We don’t feel comfortable with it,” he told AFP. “It makes it bitter. Makes the visit bitter, because it’s a wonder, one of the wonders of the world.”

 

He had travelled to Agra from Delhi, the choking Indian megacity of 20 million people 155 miles to the north, where the air was “very, very bad”, he said.

 

Schoolchildren protest outside the Indian Environment Ministry against alarming levels of pollution in the city, in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. Air pollution in New Delhi and northern Indian states peaks in the winter as farmers in neighboring agricultural regions set fire to clear land after the harvest and prepare for the next crop season. The pollution in the Indian capital also peaks after Diwali celebrations, the Hindu festival of light, when people set off fireworks. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[NoCalMike]

Aren't there statistics that show the more empowered and independent women become, the more birth rates drop?  Women feel they are more than their husband's baby factory.  Not all women, mind you.  Plenty of women still want to have children, but the idea of "family planning" is a foreign concept to many in third world countries beyond, "plan on having a family"

Edited November 7 by NoCalMike

[abdcskins]

2 hours ago, Destino said:

So long as it remains an academic discussion, sure.  When it escapes into the wider world it transforms into the root of major evils.  Genocide, slavery, systemic oppression of every kind.  All of these evils are nested in the idea that some people are inherently better, and thus deserving of greater rights and respect than others. 

 

 

 

I agree.  I'm not saying anyone is better than anyone else, I'm saying all human beings suck haha.  I'm joking, sort of.  I realize what I'm saying is a very cynical approach to solving overpopulation.  I can't help it, I'm not a big fan of humanity what can I say.  I wouldn't quite say I want complete anti-natalism, I just want humans to slow down dramatically on reproducing.  I think it would benefit society and the planet.  Ultimately, we need to figure out real ways to stop C02 emissions.  Reducing the amount of people on earth isn't going to change that.  I read a couple articles today, there were some good quotes in there.  I actually googled this very question today, I found an article that pretty much supports your opinion.

 

https://earther.gizmodo.com/is-the-world-really-overpopulated-1834854464

 

 

2 hours ago, Destino said:

Would that be about her debate with Peter Singer?  I vaguely remember being horrified by their ghoulish exchange.  Their is something very unnerving about a person able to smile and make nice with someone while arguing that they shouldn't have been allowed to live.  I can't help but imagine the outcome of people like that ever managing to ascend into positions of power, though I suspect history books are already filled with examples of exactly how that plays out. 

 

 

Precisely.  The article was Unspeakable Conversations.  I'm not gonna lie, I actually agreed with some of what Singer had to say, but in the end we should let disabled people decide whether their lives are pleasant or not.  The second question regards genetic testing and whether or not to terminate the life of a fetus that has a genetic mutation of some kind.  In the article, it was Peter Singer who argued that it should be lawful under some circumstances to kill people with severe cognitive impairments, no matter their age. I could write a whole paper on the subject (I did last week), but I will just say that I lean towards allowing the parents to decide whether or not they want to raise a child with so many difficult needs.  There are many hardships involved in raising a child with cognitive disabilities.  It can become a burden, particularly in later life when the parents become elderly.  I don’t think it is fair to the parents to force them to take on such an exigent task if it isn’t something they want to do.  The irrational argument, however, is that people with cognitive disabilities aren’t able to live happy productive lives.  I just wonder though, if that is all they know, then how do they even know if their lives are good or not?  That's my devil's advocate question.

 

Like I said, I'm a pragmatic person.  Somewhat related- as an aspiring therapist, I know I seriously need to work on my compassion.  I also get irritated when people do stupid things, which is quite often.  When I say things like, "it doesn't matter who the president is," I know I am completely wrong.  It very much matters who the president is.  I know that is my privilege talking.  I say it for other reasons too - I don't think the president represents the people well, or even cares about them for that matter.  He cares about the corporate and individual donors.  I know many people who think like I do, and they are poor Latino and black people, so I would argue that indifference to politics is not just a white privilege thing.  I don't see any change in society, doesn't matter if the president is Democratic or Republican.  Anyway whatever thanks for the stimulating conversation.