This is an absolutely fantastic article about HIV/AIDS in Thailand by photographer Rick Gunn, who is cycling around the world for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
It is a beautiful article.
One nitpick — and I hate to do this to such a piece:
It highlighted a recent study by the World Health Organization that concluded pollution had reached “serious” levels in Asian cities – up to 70 micrograms of particulate per cubic meter. Safe levels hovered around 20.
It had been five years since the contingent of dimwits in the highest halls of my homeland had dismissed themselves from the ratification of the Kyoto accords – choosing cash over clean air.
No. Well, not really, at least. The Kyoto Protocol was about greenhouse gases not about “air pollution,” exactly. Not all greenhouses gases are what we think of as pollutants.
Carbon dioxide, for example, isn’t going to kill you. (Well, it could, I guess, but carbon monoxide would do the job better.) And methane, nitrous oxide, and CFC 11 & 12 (the four other pollutants named by the Kyoto Protocol) generally won’t either. Errr…I mean, I wouldn’t suck them down, either.
On the other hand, ozone, which is a major industrial pollutant AND a greenhouse gas, wasn’t part of the Kyoto Protocol.
What I won’t dispute is that CO2 and industrial pollutants go hand in hand — the same process that is creating all this excess CO2 is also making things like ozone. And Kyoto might do some good in that regard. After all, you can’t limit CO2 without limiting the industrial processes that make all the other sorts of pollutants, cow farts and rice paddies aside. As a practical matter, however, Kyoto does bupkis for the choking masses of Asia.
Likewise, the biggest polluters in Asia, China and India, are exempt from Kyoto. (See also, the Asian Brown Cloud.)
Gunn talks about particulate matter in the atmosphere, but that’s generally dust and smoke. (Actually, does the Asian Brown Cloud have any albedo effects on the climate? That might be worth looking up…)
I’m splitting hairs, I know. But frankly, I think it is this sort of lack of clarity that ultimately ends up confusing the public and, ultimately, makes them distrust the message.
While it might reinforce the idea that Something Must Be Done (and it must!), you can’t build an argument on half-truths.
I thought Gunn threw in a cheap shot. Granted, I approve of this particular cheap shot, in general, but there is a time and a place. And this cheap shot took me out of the story.
Also neat is the byline, which makes it look like he’s making a legal case:
To Save Siam
Rick Gunn
For the Appeal