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By all appearances New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s new
bicycle-rental program is a success.
As I walk around the city most of the Bloombergian bike
racks are empty. New Yorkers and tourists seem to like being able to ride
bicycles through Manhattan’s streets. Better bikes than buses or subways.
I have mentioned before that the great minds who conjured up
this piece of street theatre forgot that few activities are more unhealthy than
exercising in the polluted air that exists on Manhattan’s city streets.
Mayor Big Gulp, so avid to protect everyone’s health,
overlooked this absurdly obvious point.
Today I came across an old article from Men’s Health about
the hazards of exercising on city streets. Admittedly, it is old news, but
apparently the message has not been absorbed by New York’s movers and shakers.
John Brant describes what happened when he ran on the
streets of Portland:
With
every deep draught of oxygen, along with fresh air,
I gulp down alarming quantities of pollution:
ozone, carbon monoxide, microscopic particulate matter, sulfur dioxide,
nitrogen dioxide, lead, and a witch's brew of other pollutants. By conducting
part of my workout at midday along a congested street, I am reducing my lung
function, constricting my air passages, courting chest pain, increasing my
chances of developing asthma, unleashing free radicals to catalyze carcinogens
in my bloodstream, and activating cellular processes that might lead to a heart
attack.
"When
I see people running or bicycling along a busy street in the middle of the day,
I want to tackle them and scream at them to stop," says Rachel Langford,
coordinator of the Clean Air Project
for the American Lung Association in Oregon. "At some intersections, we
ought to post 'No Exercise Allowed' signs."
He continues:
It may
be hard to imagine that vigorous outdoor exercise -- generally trumpeted as an
all-purpose antidote to disease and a retardant to mortality -- could actually
help polluted air hurt
you. But the explanation is simple: When you're running, cycling, playing
tennis, or shooting hoops, you breathe in more of it. A lot more.
It gets better… or worse:
"That
means the exerciser breathes in 10 to 15 times more pollution than
the sedentary person, and he's sucking it deeper into his lungs," says Rob
McConnell, M.D., a researcher in the department of preventive medicine at the
University of Southern California medical school. "In fact, just by
stepping out the door, you could be exposed to five times the ozone you'd
inhale if you stayed inside. So if you're outdoors and exercising . . . well,
do the math."
The
numbers grow more harrowing, because you breathe primarily through your mouth
during exercise. At the same time that I'm pulling vast clouds of bad air deep
into my lungs during my noon run, I'm also bypassing my body's remarkably
effective air-filtering system: the nasal passages. (Mucus traps particulates,
and then tiny, waving, hairlike structures called cilia push the old mucus up
and out of the body.) The triple whammy of breathing fast, deeply, and through
the mouth makes my daily run -- and perhaps your regular workout -- an
ozone/particulate/carbon monoxide orgy.
The rest of the article is well worth a read.
11 comments:
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grows with the costs of health care. So if we fail to tax polution as a spillover harm to others, the cost of polution shifts to the health care bill, which grows GDP! Since GDP growth is a good thing, if the costs of cleaning up or living with polution are greater than the costs of prevention, then it is better to polute than to clean up our technology. But of course the monetary value system is perverse since everyone knows that in terms of health an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but no one gets rich selling you an ounce of prevention, do they?
but no one gets rich selling you an ounce of prevention, do they?
Actually Government gets rich 'selling' you ounces of prevention every day, They sell you more police to keep you safe from crime, they sell you more firemen to keep your property safe from fire, more and wider roads to keep you safe, mandated safety features on cars to keep you safe. Government is in the business of selling ounces of prevention and almost everyone is happily buying.
I remember during the ObamaCare debate, Charles Krauthammer thus article on "The Great 'Prevention' Myth." It's worth a read:
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-08-14/opinions/36902492_1_preventive-care-preventive-services-health-care
I assert people do get rich on prevention. The question is whether further prevention is worth the cost. Sure New York and other major cities have a lot of pollution... these are massive concentrations of human beings and associated economic activity in very small spaces. There are trade-offs. What re we going to do, take away modern conveniences and productivity that creates jobs so we can turn NYC into a concrete Garden of Eden? Bloomberg continues along his demagogic, narcissistic crusade to save us from ourselves. Gulp, indeed.
Taxing pollution is not a solution to our problem, because the revenues will never be spent for the purposes they're collected for. The solution is to keep pushing toward the possibilities of fusion power. That will be a Great Leap Forward for humanity, with comfort and public health benefits.
Tip
Minneapolis has a NiceRide bike system too, and it seems to be popular. Our air is probably not as polluted as the Big Apple on an average day, but really I don't think the level of exertion most people are biking is any more than walking. It's the joggers who are huffing and puffing the unhealthy air deep into their lungs. Of course walkers and joggers are not getting in the way of car drivers, so their unhealthy choices of breathing but not adding to the pollution are not the problem, right?
If bikers move faster than walkers, then I will assume that they are exerting themselves more. Besides, bikers in NYC ride with traffic... they do not even have the sidewalks to place some distance between themselves and the pollutants. I agree with you that, in all likelihood, minneapolis is less polluted than NYC.
I posted at 10:36AM. Polution is an example of "market failure." The costs and benefits of market activity are not internalized to the price, the spillover benefit or harm is an externality, and the term for this is market failure. A tax on polution is a reasonable way for society to recognize the spillover benefits or costs of some activity. Government exists as the remedy for market failure which includes the fact that private interests do not wish to provide public goods.
The concept of "market failure" is nonsense. I've been arguing with economists about it for years. It's groupspeak, it's poor English, and it's not true. It gives reason for people to favor government participation to correct the supposed "market failure," which it cannot do effectively because it does not have superior capabilities, only police power. It's only option is market intervention.
Look at government's response to the "market failure" within the financial sector. I'll leave it to you to decide if these bailouts and regulatory regimes work. My view is they do not. Look at the "too big to fail" nonsense, government picking winners and losers. Is the result of all that meddling a rational market? Is that a win for consumers? Is that a "public good?" Is that "market success?" I think not. Think about pollution. What we have is "currency pollution" in the form of endless money-printing (euphemistically called "quantitative easing," enough to make Orwell vomit in his grave). Who benefits? The economic producers: banking and government. Who loses? The consumer. Who wins with sulphur exhaust contamination? The producer (keeps making profits) and the government (more revenue and expansion of role as an economic actor). It's not a "market failure," it's market manipulation. And we get screwed. Pretty great racket, eh?
Markets do NOT fail. If people stop participating in the market, it halts. The only reason for market destruction is government meddling in how market actors are to participate/behave. When that ceases to be about operating as a referee, and regulation becomes a ideological intervention or the government participates as an economic actor (influencing prices), the market is perverted... or destroyed. It doesn't fail. Look p the definition of "market" in the dictionary.
Pollution is a consequence of economic activity. All economic processes create waste. It's unavoidable. When pollution is intentionally dumped (made to be someone else's problem), it is a crime. It has nothing to do with the operation of a market.
Your view of the government's role seems to be a rationalization for your belief of how economic actors should behave. That is a moral argument, not an economic one. Would you say a "public good" is an economic actor not producing goods and services that create waste? That's not possible. Direct civil (or even criminal) penalties are sensible to mitigate the economic incentives to pollute, though effective government partnership with industry to manage waste is ideal. Using tax policy is reactionary, and only feeds the government trough. The outcome for the consumer or citizen is the only "failure" in that structure, as tax receipts are rarely, if ever, dedicated to pollution abatement. Instead, they are used as general revenue so the government can meddle in other economic affairs.
Please stop idealizing the government and its role, as it is operated by human beings, too. And the impact of pollution is real, so please stop sanitizing your language with intellectual terms like "externalities." And others like "market failure."
Tip
Markets are bargains. Of course if people stop making bargains, then markets stop. So what?
1. markets == contract law.
2. market failure == tort law.
3. intentional or recless harm == criminal law.
Economists or jursits correctly identify social customs in terms of bargains and failure of the bargaining process. People who do not want government are like children who do not want mommy and daddy to resolve issues of sibling rivalry ... the psychology is the same in childhood and in society.
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