Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
hands. Dublin, in the early 1980s, was a city in which most households still burned coal in
open fireplaces. I remember a light powdering of soot on every surface. Most of the grand
old buildings in the city centre were black from centuries of air pollution, a reminder that
the wealth of the industrialized West was built on a mountain of coal.
This story is mirrored in most cities in the industrialised world. The industrial expansion
that began in the mid- to late nineteenth century had, by the mid-twentieth, thoroughly
contaminated the air and water in most European and North American cities. The cleanup
began gradually, spurred by dramatic events such as the Great London Smog of 1952,
when a blanket of coal smoke hung over the city for a week, claiming 4,000 lives (McNeill
case of the Japanese Chisso Corporation, whose chemical factory pumped mercury into
Minamata Bay in Japan for four decades, causing thousands of cases of brain damage and
Today, most cities in Europe, North America, and Japan are much cleaner than they
were a generation ago. This change is partly because of environmental legislation and
partly because the West has exported many of its dirtiest and most energy-intensive
industries, including shipbuilding, textiles, paper and steel, to China, India, Mexico and
other 'emerging' economies. Factories in those countries rely mostly on coal-fired
electricity, generated without the filters and scrubbers that would be required by law in the
West. Therefore, the relatively clean lakes, rivers, and air in the West have been achieved
at the cost of poisoned rivers and smog-shrouded cities in the East.
Some argue that there is no way to avoid a dirty initial phase in economic growth,
and that countries such as China, India, and Brazil are today going through an industrial
revolution similar to that of Europe and North America in the nineteenth century. Energy
consumptionissointertwinedwitheconomicgrowththatgovernmentsarewaryoflimiting
the former for fear of stifling the latter. China continues to rely heavily on coal rather than
gas or renewables because it is cheap and plentiful, and its economic success is built on
quick and cheap production. Up to now, China has argued that economic growth trumps
environmental protection, and that raising incomes takes priority over reducing smog.
This is likely to change, as it did in countries that industrialised earlier, once the costs of
pollution outweigh the economic gain.
5.5 Climate Change: The Great Leveller
For centuries the seafaring nations of Europe dreamed of an alternative sea route to the Far
East that, heading west, would cut out the long voyage around the southern tip of Africa
and across the Indian Ocean. Between 1746 and 1846, ten separate expeditions tried and
