An Environmental Problem We Can Fix
IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE places more different from one another than Delhi, India; Mexico City, Mexico; and Gary, Indiana. Yet years after I visited those cities, they’re indelibly linked in my memory for one reason: the foul, polluted air smothering their landscapes. The pollution was so heavy you could see it wafting through the interiors of modern buildings (Delhi, 2016), feel it stinging your eyes (Mexico City, 1972), and smell it through closed car windows (Gary, the 1960s). Despite its ubiquity, or perhaps because of it, air pollution has rarely gotten the sustained attention it deserves. That’s an outrage, given that air pollution is a global killer, causing an astonishing seven million premature deaths every year. But it’s also an opportunity, because this is an environmental problem that we actually can…