Comments by "Peter Jacobsen" (@pjacobsen1000) on "99% of world’s most polluted cities are in Asia" video.

  1. It's so interesting: Countries/cities with high air pollution are invariably places that are at a relatively low level of development, but that are undergoing high economic growth and rapid industrialization. 150 years ago, London was perhaps the most heavily polluted city in the world, then other western cities quickly followed suit. In the 1960s, NYC and LA were struggling with very high levels of smog. Then, in the 1990s and 2000s, China had 7 of the top 10 most polluted cities. Now China has moved to the next level and the air is getting cleaner, but new emerging economies are sprouting: India, Vietnam and others. Eventually, they will also move beyond this phase and new countries will become the 'most polluted'. Air pollution seems to be inevitable in economic growth, but it is just a phase on the way to prosperity and 'developed status'.
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  2. Exactly! Now we can have fun imagining what will be the next handful of countries that will undergo this phase.
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  3.  @gmanlee575  Don't you remember China in the 1990s?
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  4.  @HoldMyCowsberg  Are you referring to the future handful of emerging economies? I'd like to hear your ideas. Just 4-5 countries that will start growing fast 15-20 years from now. I'll give you mine: -Nigeria, -Ethiopia, -Kenya, -Myanmar, -D.R.Congo.
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  5.  @gmanlee575  Well, I haven't been to India for a long time, but based on reports about the various development efforts underway, I does look to me like India now is where China was around the year 2000, maybe even a little later, 2005.
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  6.  @AceChina  Ok, a kind of arrested development.
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