Read Jenny’s articles at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free
Yesterday was a good day to bury bad news under several feet of snow. As Boris Johnson skated between media interviews trying to justify his dubious decision to cancel all the buses in London, no one considered asking him to justify the much more environmentally disastrous decision to cancel the rollout of the low emission zone to 90,000 light goods vehicles. It is probably the worse environmental decision Johnson will make in his four years as mayor. Not only will it mean huge fines from the EU, but it also means he is ignoring the estimates of a thousand premature deaths from air pollution in London every year.
The low emission zone was brought in a year ago to get the most polluting heavy goods vehicles off London’s streets. It works by issuing heavy fines to those vehicles not meeting minimum European standards. It has been a success and the plan was to extend it to include the growing number of old vans that emit particulates, called PM10s by the scientists who measure that sort of thing. The PM10 bit is important because London’s failure to meet the legal standards for particulates is the reason why the European Commission sent a letter to the UK government last week, starting court action. Ten years of delay and complacency over air quality has finally led to the EU losing patience with our government’s failure to protect the health of its citizens.
There is no such of urgency from either the government or mayor. No sense that the UK needs to reduce air pollution in London by more than a third in the next few months, to meet European Union limits. Nor is this
problem fading away, as government ministers have assured us it would.
In 2004, there were five monitoring stations that recorded a breach of the EU limits. This had risen to 18 monitoring stations by 2008. Some of this increase is simply down to scientists getting better at showing us the scale of the problem, but some of it is due to there being more delivery vans and lorries. In fact the mayor’s own freight strategy expects another 15% increase in goods vehicles by 2025.
Dropping the next stage of the low emission zone is not the only reason why Johnson has now become defendant number one in any courthouse action, with unlimited fines a possible outcome. His pledge to scrap the western extension of the congestion charge will make air quality worse.
His decision to scrap the six-monthly inspections for black cabs has meant that hundreds of these vehicles are running around London polluting both passengers and drivers. His mad scheme to replace the bendy bus on route 38 will lead to PM10 pollution on this route going up by a third. None of these decisions have a great impact individually, but taken together they are all creating a more polluted and unhealthy city.
To be fair to Johnson, he did have a choice between improving the environment and hitting small businesses in London with the added expense of upgrading their delivery vans. He made the short-term economic choice so often favoured by mainstream politicians. Such choices appear easier to justify unless you ask yourself whether any small businesses in London have non-oxygen breathing customers. As Lennon said, "we are all connected by the air we breathe" and if our own politicians are too cowardly to make the hard choice, then we will have to rely upon the European courts to ensure that London’s commuters, workers, drivers and business people are all protected from dirty vehicles.