Guiding a bus through 1950s smog
I have recently seen or heard a few things about the 50s, and it has made me think on how progress is made…
In the 1950′s the air in London was so polluted that sometimes it was literally impossible to see your hand in front of your face. The pollution was largely caused by the high volume and low quality of post-war coal used throughout a cold winter, and new diesel fueled buses that had replaced the tram system. Thousands of people died from smog related illnesses and everyone knew that the pollution was a major problem.
In 1956 the government introduced the ‘Clean Air Act’ which among other things set regulations about what fuels could be used and set a minimum height for chimneys. It also forced power stations to be situated away from residential areas and the result was a much cleaner London.
Even though the people already knew the causes of the deaths and illnesses they did very little about them until the government actually legislated.
The same story is true today. People are concerned, scientists even more so. Everyone wants to do their bit but it is impossible without government action. We recycle and try to help where possible, despite knowing we cant make any real difference on our own.
If you need evidence that nothing gets done without government action, I was just sent this link to a story on New Scientist about how the efficiency of US automobiles has hardly changed since the Model-T Ford…. and that is a very very long time ago.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17506-us-vehicle-efficiency-hardly-changed-since-model-t.html
I’m not an expert in this field, nor am I any kind of tree-hugger, but it seems obvious to me that if the government were to legislate that all cars sold after Jan 1st 2015 have a maximum of X emissions (no matter what X is) that the industry would adapt and the target would be met. There could be government incentives in order to make this happen: grants, loans, tax breaks, property, equipment…. whatever it takes to make a change. Once this was in place they could even reduce the threshold by 1% every Y months / years and I suspect that the same auto manufacturers would still be selling vehicles for years to come.
As the saying goes, Where there’s s a will, there’s a way – but with governments of the last few decades it seems there is very little will to do anything real about this issue at all. What is stopping them?
Maybe once I feel I have reached my creative limit with GarageBand I will move back up to Ableton, but this time around, seeing as I haven’t even managed to record anything I like the sound of yet, that is definitely a long way off.
