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Want to Live Longer? Cut the Pollution
By Tiffany Sharples, TIME, Jan. 22, 2009

Nobody pretends that polluted air isn’t terrible for your health. Clean up the skies over any dirty city, and the people who live there will all but certainly become healthier. That, at least, has been popular wisdom, but until now, no one had ever put it to a statistical test. Now someone has, and the results are striking: according to a study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine, when local governments decide to scrub out the smog, local residents actually live an average of five months longer.

“It’s very reassuring,” says Dr. Douglas Dockery, one of the study’s three authors and an environmental epidemiologist at Harvard’s School of Public Health. “We can see some benefits from the regulations of air pollution that have been put in place in the past 20 to 30 years.”

In order to reach so precise a finding, the study’s authors had to do some exhaustive number-crunching, surveying pollution rates and longevity in 51 cities across the U.S. over a 21-year period from 1979 to 2000. Overall, they found that lifespan in all of the areas increased by an average of nearly three years — from 74 to 77 — as a result of a host of factors, most notably reduced smoking and improved income. But 15% of the change was attributable to cleaner air.

Read rest of the article here | Read the New England Journal of Medicine Report

Photo credit: springm

From TIME Magazine’s interview with Person of the Year President-elect Barack Obama:

More than ever, I think, a wholesale investment in transforming our economy — from retrofitting buildings so that they’re energy-efficient to changing our transportation patterns and thinking about how to rebuild our electricity grid — those are all things that we’re going to need now more than ever.

And then the final thing, just to round out my Happy List, is climate change. All the indicators are that this is happening faster than even the most pessimistic scientists were anticipating a couple of years ago. It is going to require an enormous effort on the part of the global community to deal with it. And it is not going to come without cost. Trying to bring about that transformation — which I think offers huge opportunities for economic growth and job creation over the long term, but will entail some costs in the short term — you know, that’s the hardest thing to do in politics, right? To make big investments in things that have long-term payoffs.

Read the entire TIME interview here.

Photo credit: BohPhoto

Take to low carbon technologies
The Financial Express, 2008-12-20

New Delhi: Releasing the first ever survey of corporate India’s environment consciousness, RK Pachauri, chair of the Nobel prize winner Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change, said on Friday, “If we want to succeed economically, we have to move towards low carbon emitting technologies”. The pioneering survey is a joint venture between The Financial Express and Emergent Ventures India (EVI).

Pachauri told a distinguished gathering of industry leaders, academics and students at Energy & Resources Institute (Teri) University here, “the adverse impact of climate change is the greatest challenge of this century and the industry must has to rethink its water usage strategy so that less water intensive industrial techniques are adopted across the country”.

The FE-EVI survey covers the top corporates of India as tracked by the FE 500. Releasing the result of the survey How Green is your Business, Pachauri stated that one of the ways the industry could take the environment agenda forward was to be more discerning of the usage of water.

His comments triggered an exciting panel discussion among the CEOs of some of India’s leading companies across sectors. Taking Pachauri’s view forward, Naina Lal Kidwai, group general manager and country head, HSBC India, said adherence to green financing norms ought to occupy more space in discussions between companies and financial institutions for financing projects.

The discussion created an immediate rapport with the large audience in the winter afternoon whose questions kept the session going way beyond the scheduled time for wrapping it up.

Besides Kidwai, the panel included Subir Raha, former chairman of Oil and Natural Gas Company (ONGC) and chairman, Team Raha Ideation Ltd, Samir

Modi, managing director, Colorbar Cosmetics, Rajdeep Sahrawat, vice-president, Nasscom, Sohinder Gill, chief executive officer, Hero Electric, Harshpati Singhania, managing director, JK Paper, K Ravi Kumar, chairman, Bharat Heavy Electrical Ltd (Bhel), Mark Runacres, senior fellow, Teri and former British deputy high commissioner, Kamal Meattle, CEO, Paharpur Business Centre and Software Technology Software Incubator Park and Vinod Kala from EVI.

The debate was centered around whether there was a need for creation of more regulations for industry or to make it a bottom up approach where pressure from investor community on the industries will drive green technology.

Read rest of the article here

Soon, drive to Agra in two hours
3 Dec 2008, 2258 hrs IST, Dipak Kumar Dash, TNN

NEW DELHI: With the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) inviting bids for the six-laning of Delhi-Agra stretch of NH-2, driving down to the Taj city may soon be a smoother and quicker ride. Once completed, it would take not more than two hours to cover the 180km from Delhi to Agra as the maximum speed on this stretch would be 100 kmph.

NHAI sources said the date of the pre-bidding conference has been extended to December 18 and the revised last date of submitting bids has been fixed on January 12. The Rs 1,566 crore BOT project takes off from Delhi-Faridabad border, and traverses the districts of Agra, Mathura in Uttar Pradesh and Faridabad in Haryana.

“We are hopeful of good participation in the pre-bidding conference and of awarding the project soon. However, we are little skeptical of the impact of financial meltdown,” said a senior NHAI official.

For uninterrupted traffic flow on this proposed six-lane access control highway, NHAI proposes construction of as many as 25 flyovers at all the major junctions throughout the stretch wile the minor ones would be done away with. To meet the operational objective of maintaining uninterrupted flow of traffic without reducing the speed to accommodate entry, exit or cross movement of other traffic, there are proposals for construction of 32 vehicular and 61 pedestrian underpasses besides having 76 entry and exit points to the partially access-controlled highway.

Read rest of the story here

NEW DELHI: Indians don’t mind paying more for environment friendly goods, compared to the Chinese or the Japanese, even though they are not unduly worried that the environment is in a crisis.

Thus, 88 per cent of Indian consumers are prepared to pay more for goods that are environment friendly against 82 per cent in China and 68 per cent in Japan, according to a study of consumers in India, China and Japan.

Findings are part of a 10-market global study by international communication firm Edelman.

Unlike their peers in other countries, respondents in India believe there is too much fuss about the environment (79 per cent) and they do not believe the world is experiencing global warming (56 per cent). Still, 92 per cent feel it is their duty to contribute to a better society and environment.

The study sought to understand consumer attitudes and preferences on the emerging issue of social purpose. Its findings show that despite the economic downturn, a strong majority think it is important to purchase products and brands they perceive to be socially responsible India (90 per cent), China (90 per cent) and Japan (64 per cent).

“What we find particularly interesting in this study is that economic concerns are taking a distant place behind consumers’ demands that quality brands be produced by socially conscious companies,” says Alan VanderMolen, Edelman’s Asia-Pacific President.

“The current economic crisis has made little or no difference to the financial or voluntary support given to good causes by Indians. We found that 23 per cent of Indian respondents have actually paid more for a brand because it supports a good cause.

About Edelman’s Good Purpose Consumer Study

StrategyOne conducted 6,048 interviews in 10 countries between August and October 2008. The study was an online survey of consumers, nationally representative of each of the country populations. For India and China survey was conducted as face to face and CATI respectively. Sample sizes per country are: US = 1006, China = 1000, UK = 522, Germany = 506, Brazil =500, Italy = 500, Japan = 502, India = 503, Canada = 502. France=507. The margin of error is +/- 5% for the Chinese, Indian and Japanese samples.

Read full Edelman press release here