Londoners are as concerned about air pollution as climate change. Claire Harding looks at 3 key reasons why there’s growing agreement behind the headlines.
Amid all the controversy about the ULEZ extension in outer London, it’s easy to miss how much consensus there is about the need to reduce air pollution.
Our polling with Savanta shows that 88% of Londoners worry about the impact of air pollution in their local area, with concern higher among younger people, parents, people living in inner London and Black Londoners. These levels of concern are similar to the level of concern about the impact of climate change in London.
But climate change is getting worse, and air pollution in London is (by many measures) getting better. What’s going on?
3 reasons for London’s air pollution consensus
The impact of campaigning
First, we’ve seen some amazing campaigning and coalition building.
Following the death of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah in 2009, her mother Rosamund has worked heroically to raise awareness of the dangers of pollution and how it links to ethnic and income inequality.
The Ella Roberta Foundation has campaigned alongside more established environmental campaign groups and newer grassroots groups like Mums for Lungs to bring a powerful focus on children’s health: it’s striking that school streets, which aim to reduce the air pollution that children experience, tend to be much less controversial than more general measures like LTNs.
The current Mayor of London has a strong interest in air pollution – but without this public concern, it’s unlikely that he’d have been able to implement even the inner London ULEZ.
We know more about the health impacts
Second, we know much more about the health impacts of air pollution.
The link between lung health and pollution has been known since the Industrial Revolution, but in the last 20 years we’ve seen more and more evidence on the longer term and less obvious effects. Among many other things, air pollution has been linked with dementia, miscarriage, and learning difficulties.
This increased knowledge isn’t because air pollution is getting worse in the UK (although it is certainly getting worse in some parts of the world) but because scientists have better data and statistical methods to make the link.
Technological advances have made air pollution monitors smaller and cheaper, making it possible to offer local air quality alerts and for communities to track the impact of local changes to traffic in real time.
A chance to make a visible difference on climate change
Air pollution can be a positive focus for campaigners and politicians because it’s possible to make a big impact quite quickly, and feel it locally.
Although London can be affected by air pollution from the other European countries (especially when there’s a southerly wind for a few days) and from industry and agriculture in the wider south east, most of our pollution is home-grown.
And most pollutants blow out on the wind, disappear, or settle out of the air, within anything from a few hours to a few weeks – so it’s often possible to link reductions in air pollution to specific policy changes.
This is in stark contrast to climate change, where individual and even city level changes make a limited difference.
What’s next?
Woodburning is offsetting progress in transport emissions
Pollution in London has been falling because transport is becoming less polluting. But some of this fall has been offset by a rise in pollution from woodburning stoves.
In winter, air pollution often peaks on still, cold Sundays after people have lit their stoves on Friday or Saturday. The Mayor has effectively banned wood burning stoves in new developments, but polling suggests that two thirds of Londoners support a total ban.
Campaigners are already sharpening their focus on this. We expect it to be a big policy issue next winter, possibly leading to some challenging local debates about personal choice versus personal responsibility.
The future of ULEZ
It’s still possible that legal challenges against the ULEZ expansion will succeed, and that it won’t launch on 31 August. And it’s also possible that the next Mayor of London will cancel it.
But it seems certain that Londoners will continue to care about air pollution, and continue to ask politicians how they will balance the need to cut emissions with the need to keep our city working.
We’ve recently published a report on transport in outer London, which looks beyond the ULEZ to ask how we can help people be less dependent on their cars.
Later this month we’ll be publishing a report on how financial incentives can encourage sustainable transport choices: sign up to our newsletter or follow us on Twitter to hear about it when it’s launched.
We’re looking for supporters for some more in-depth work on woodburning stoves in the autumn: get in touch on partnerships@centreforlondon.org to find out more.