Is air pollution less important than politics?
137
views
Last week the UK government finally released the latest draft of its plan to tackle illegal levels of air pollution, and it has already come under fire, critics claiming that it doesn’t do enough to tackle the problems.
After a lengthy battle with environmental law group ClientEarth the high court initially ruled that the government had to release its plans before April 24th to begin tackling air pollution levels within the UK. Prime Minister Theresa May tried to fight the ruling, arguing that the release of “controversial documents” could harm her parties election results, but was over ruled.
During the media storm of the local elections on May 5th, the government has finally released its plans, and unsurprisingly those plans have already begun to come under fire, both from ClientEarth and from Caroline Lucas of the Green Party.
loading...
It has been claimed that levels of air pollution in the UK, which are officially higher than EU legal levels, contribute to around 40,000 premature deaths per year, particularly targeting the young, old, and infirm. The UK government had originally announced it planned to bring air pollution levels in line with EU legislation by 2020 for most cities and by 2025 for London. It was argued that this was not “as soon as possible,” but instead just a decision made in order to prevent facing EU fines, which resulted in a lengthy high court case between ClientEarth and the Government.
Having finally caved in the government released it’s plans on May 5th, hidden among the local party elections, but that wasn’t enough to prevent backlash from environmental campaigners. In an article in the Independent Newspaper Caroline Lucas claimed “In fact, it’s not so much a plan, but a plan to have a plan. It rightly states that Clean Air Zones are the single most effective way to tackle the dirty emissions, but fails to announce even one measure to ensure they are established.”
James Thornton of ClientEarth also had negative remarks to make about the plan, claiming that it was “much weaker than hoped for” and that the government was just “passing the buck” to local authorities to deal with the problems.
The new draft is open for consultation until June 15th, so there may be alterations made before the final plan is published on July 31st.
Loading...