SUVs And Not Farmers Responsible For The Scary Air Pollution Levels

A year ago, in November 2023, Oxfam International released a report, entitled: “Climate Equality: A Planet for the 99%.” It said that the superrich produce as much gas emissions as the bottom half.

While farmers scramble to protect their crops from climate catastrophe that the world is increasingly faced with, making food availability a lot scarier, the superrich remain insulated from the disastrous climate impacts that the world is increasingly coming to grips with.

“That’s the superrich – with their massive investments in dirty industries, along with their private jets, yachts and lavish lifestyles – polluting as much as five billion people put together,” said Oxfam, summing up the ordeal that the rich bestow on the poor.

The study estimated that the excessive climate pollution results in an additional 1.3 million heat-related deaths every year.

Meanwhile, The New Yorker magazine had in March 2023 written something that we don’t want to hear. While the top one per cent, comprising the super-rich, may be beyond the reach of ordinary citizens, and that includes the burgeoning middle class, what the magazine wrote is not only within our reach but we also take pride in showing it off as a symbol of the newly acquired affluence.

I am talking of SUV cars that accounted for 48 per cent of the global car sales in 2023. The article based on a compilation by the International Energy Agency (IEA) shockingly admits that if SUVs were a country, they would be the world’s fifth largest emitter of carbon dioxide pollution.

SUVs on an average emit 20 per cent more carbon emissions than a mid-size car, the article acknowledges.

These SUVs had gobbled over 600,000 barrels of oil per day in 2022 and 2023, which is a quarter of the annual growth in global oil demand.

If every fourth car on the road today is a SUV, imagine the air pollution that is being generated. Since it is the top segment of the population that is in possession of SUV cars, I am sure a significant proportion of readers of this column would easily fall in that category.

But is there any remorse, I am afraid not. Going by the annual sale figures, the number of trendy SUVs on the road is only increasing each passing year.

This reminds me of an editorial in a major Indian English daily published in October 2021. While acknowledging that the SUV car sales had picked up, displacing the ubiquitous small car sales, the effort was to paint it as nothing we should be worried when it comes to air pollution. The focus was on air quality norms that the SUV car segment vitiated, but it was amusing to see the editorial calling it a misplaced emphasis and making a strong plea to keep the blame steadfast on combustion of coal and biomass, and dust blowing off degraded land. Such editorial writers have to be applauded for leaving no stone upturned when it comes to lobbying hard for the unhindered growth of the automobile industry.

What actually prompted me to draw attention to the disastrous impact of heightened levels of industrial pollution that has inflicted a severe blow to the global climate – moving from global warming to the global boiling stage, and that too despite global efforts to keep the temperature be within the outer limits of 1.5 degree rise – is the blame is actually on the poor Indian farmers. Media reports on October 16 said that the Supreme Court had pulled up the Punjab and Haryana governments over non-prosecution of violators found guilty of stubble burning and summoned the state chief secretaries to appear for an explanation.

Exactly a week later, the Supreme Court said that the time had come to remind governments that citizens have a fundamental right under Article 21 to live in a pollution-free environment. S

tubble burning, as we all know it by now, is a seasonal feature when farmers in the northwest regions of Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and parts of Rajasthan, put the paddy stubbles to fire to make way for the sowing of the next crop after the harvest of paddy. This has been blamed for the huge pollution in the national capital, with the thickened pollution particles chocking the air in and around New Delhi.

Interestingly, while Punjab farmers are blamed for creating the environmental crisis, the latest study by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) Pune, finds stubble burning to be responsible for only 1.3 per cent of the pollution over New Delhi. At the same time, the study says that vehicular pollution is responsible for 14.2 per cent pollution, followed by construction activities and dust.

I don’t want to get into the reasons that lead to spike in air pollution over the capital coinciding with a brief period when farmers find it easy to burn the paddy stubbles, but draw attention to harsh measures like registering FIRs and stopping farmers from selling their crop at Minimum Support Price (MSP) for two years (like in Haryana), gives an impression that farmers are nothing but criminals.

Punjab produces 200 lakh tonnes of paddy stubble and Haryana produces another 81 lakh tonnes. The huge volume of biomass that paddy generates certainly calls for remedial measures. But putting farmers behind bars may end up complicating the farming crisis in the days to come.

Not only clean air is a fundamental right, the difficulty that farmers encounter in disposing off the paddy stubbles remains a big challenge. Punjab has already brought 1.5 lakh machines for crop residue management (CRM), of which 50,000 have already become redundant, and Haryana has provided another 91 lakh machines (on subsidy), and yet stubble management covers only a fraction of the total biomass that is generated.

I agree that clean air is a fundamental right but so also is clean water. When I look at the struggle millions of people living on the banks of the dirty Buddha Dariya in Ludhiana have undergone for roughly 40 years now, I wonder why similar draconian laws have never been used against erring industries.

Further, take the pollution of the mighty Yamuna River in New Delhi where industrial waste leads to the formation of white foam floating over the river waters. If laws similar to Section 14 of the Commission on Air Quality Management (CAQM) Act, which prescribes five-year jail and a penalty of Rs. one crore, were imposed against industrial pollution, the air and water pollution levels would have drastically come down by now.

Going by the experience of recent years, stubble burning continues to remain a contentious issue. If only the Centre had conceded to the request made by the successive Punjab Chief Ministers, from Prakash Singh Badal to Capt Amarinder Singh and now to Bhagwant Mann, to provide farmers with a small additional incentive to manage the paddy stubbles, the farm fire problem would have been duly taken care of. Blaming farmers therefore is easy, but if only the policy makers had listened to what farmers had all these years been asking for, Delhi’s sky would have been much cleaner.

And lastly, going by the latest study by IITM, it is vehicular pollution that is the biggest villain of New Delhi’s air pollution story. With no let down in the number of vehicles on the roads, and add to it the ever-growing number of highly polluting SUV cars, wonder when will the capital begins to point a finger inwards.

As an editorial rightly has rightly put it, “the biggest elephant in the room is Delhi’s baseline pollution load.”

It calls for the rich and powerful to first get down from the SUV cars that they flaunt as a status symbol.

(The author is a noted food policy analyst and an expert on issues related to the agriculture sector. He writes on food, agriculture and hunger)