Volkswagen diesel car scam is of no consequence to us. India’s diesel vehicle industry is so powerful that even this exposé of the cover-up of diesel emissions is like water off a duck’s back to them. They should be renamed Teflon Diesel. They will ride it out, literally, even if it means we choke and die from deadly emissions of their vehicles.
Kolkata is on warring path to free its roads from the extremely polluting two-stroke three-wheelers that use a noxious cocktail of dirty and waste fuels as lubricant. The High Court has cracked whip to ensure that its orders to phase out and replace them with cleaner four-stroke three wheelers on clean fuels like LPG are implemented. Kolkata now joins the league of other Indian and Asian cities that have taken similar measures to address the pollution from these vehicles and to ensure that this important inter-mediate public transport are clean.
For the first time, Indian regulators are faced with this explicit connection – curb local air pollution to save lives, and at the same time, shrink carbon and energy imprints of vehicles to save fuels and the climate. But this synergy is the weakest link in our policies today. We are caught in serious trade-offs instead.
Even without looking at the air pollution figures we know from the darkened sky-line that Delhi's air quality gains will be lost this winter. Air has begun to get heavy with dust, smoke and particles.
CSE's analysis of Automotive Research Association of India's CO2 emissions data points to increased oil guzzling from newer personal cars at a time when oil prices are skyrocketing June 02, 2008