Dramatic fall in London’s levels of deadly pollutants after Ulez expansion
People in London have been breathing significantly cleaner air since the expansion of the ultra low emission zone (Ulez), a study has found.
Levels of deadly pollutants that are linked to a wide range of health problems – from cancer to impaired lung development, heart attacks to premature births – have dropped, with some of the biggest improvements coming in the capital’s most deprived areas.
I don’t know. You can ask those poor people who can’t afford to buy a new “eco” car and are now unable to drive if they feel like their lives are better now. Maybe they have something to say about it, but ecologists may not want to hear it. (Or, more realistically, they will ignore what people want, because intellectuals know better)
Most people directly affected are quite chilled about it. To qualify for the ULEZ. To qualify you don't really need an “eco” car, just any petrol car sold after 2005 when the Euro 4 standard came in. So a 20 year old banger will do which can be bought from £500 upwards.
Well yes, if the choice is between everyone breathing in air that damages their health, or a small number of people being unable to drive, surely the former is always better?
I'm not sure if anyone is "unable to drive" because of ULEZ. You don't have a car in London unless you have at least some money. I have a friend who dives less because it puts the cost up but again it's one of those things.
There are barely any of those. Even 19-year-old cars still qualify for ULEZ exemption as do really old beaters so only cars that are between 20 and 40 years old have to avoid the zone or pay.
Really? Are you from the area? I live there and don't know any poors driving diesels. It has been a cost for some businesses with diesel vans who have had to update but such is life.
It was a bit of a pain for me as I ended up swapping my 31 year old car for a 12 year old car but I'd rather have clean air and the 31 year old was getting a bit rusty anyway.
The change in air quality has made a big difference for me, I've been central for ~18 years and was thinking of moving out because the pollution was making my eyes sting all the time but it's much better now. Partly ULEZ and partly other stuff like the taxis going electric and the busses getting better engines.
Pssst, guess who owns fewer cars than any other demographic in a city?
Poor people.
I know this shocks boomers but the poorest people in any city don't own cars because they can't afford them - and they subsidize the vehicle owners through the taxes they pay.
A solution that works is proportional representation (PR) but generally this is a very hard sell when the there is such entrenched support for first past the post (FPTP) within the dominant parties' organising bodies.
Another linked but more indirect issue is to tax the very rich, but this that is a much longer conversation.
As I said somewhere else, Trump didn't win the election, the Democrats drove voters away. This isn't a platform for getting deep into the nitty gritty of that statement but it's true for some many people who either didn't vote (not out of apathy) or switched sides (not because they like Trump). It's a protest. And a hope that the democrats will change, or out of the ashes a 3rd party comes along, because they think (or maybe hope) that the Democrats are fucked. A country of hundreds of millions of people can do so much better that the two parties that you've got right now. I like that option... Get out of the mindset of "I _have_ to vote for these idiots or the assholes will get in". What's the worst that can happen? This. You're living it right now. Might as well use that fire that it lights inside you to build something else. Because I guarantee you there are millions of Republican voters who also wish there was some other option that wasn't the Democrats. That number is growing right now. And when you do create a new party, let it use sanity, instead of looking at the other bozos and just doing the opposite of what they do. Use it to reach across the aisles and pluck out the sane, reasonable people who just want pragmatism. People who respect the need for cooperation, diplomacy, sound reasoning.
How many deaths would there have been if people did not have access to the technologies that create air pollution? If every CO2/pollution emitting device (cars, power plants, metal production, food processing, coal mines, etc) were all to be shuttered or massively cut back at once, deaths would increase substantially more. Yeah air pollution is bad but I think the solution needs to be incentive/reward based rather than punitive.
The climate is a complex matter and we globally have many bright people on the problem. If you see yourself armchairing on that topic, you might consider that you just don't know enough.
It is a bit like doing an emergency break with a train that is about to roll into a pit filled with lava. You need to break way ahead to avoid the lava pit.
80/20 breaking still lands you in the lava pit. And the later you decide to break, the harder that breaking will have to be. Until at some point breaking alone is no longer enough. That is where we are.
You are right, I was unnecessarily harsh here, due to my own frustration that in 2025 people still can't grasp the current levels of scientific discourse on climate change — despite an abundance of good material on the matter. Maybe 20 years ago when things didn't look as overwhelmingly clear I would have reacted differently, but now it just feels exhausting.
You can not tone-police pro-climate posts while ignoring all the uncivil knee-jerk anti-climate posts that are full of insulting language about progressives and contain endless strawman arguments.
You had a chance to educate me, but you chose to attack me on a personal level instead, and you defend a policy that sets a goal that must be reached at all cost with a disregard for any negative effects.
You had the chance to learn something and chose to feel attacked on a personal level instead. This wasn't an attack on you (I don't know you after all), this was arguing against a insufficiently informed take on a topic that will likely give the grandkids of your grandkids sleepless nights. So if you feel attacked, I am sorry, but the topic is more important than you and me.
Also: The math on the costs of the consequences of climate change overwhelmingly shows that every proposed measure is a no-brainer from an economic standpoint. But this is also widely known knowledge.
These goals are what should limit the negative effects as much as possible. Its exact opposite of “disregard for any negative effect”. Its also broadly agreed on by sciencists and experts.
Science is not based on agreement or consensus, it is based on evidence. Arguing that there's scientific agreement or consensus for anything is anti-scientific.
> Arguing that there's scientific agreement or consensus for anything is anti-scientific.
Do you imagine that in a world of scientific men and women engaging in empiricism, we should disregard the agreement in our discussions and simply rediscover medical science again and again from ground zero? We're going to tell patients "Oh, wait a few lifetimes, we're busy reconfirming everything because credibility and consensus is anti-scientific."
That's what it means to disregard consensus. At some point you have to trust an entire discipline of professionals if you want to do Enormous Scale Medicine, not just singular pinpoint arguments or results.
Dramatic fall in London’s levels of deadly pollutants after Ulez expansion
~ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/07/london-a...HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43288041
Who'd have thought vehicle emissions were so bad and that life could be better by reducing usage in dense urban areas?