Host city of 2012 Olympic Games asked to learn from China'scapital how to enforce pollution-control measures successfully

The pollution wheel has come full circle, this time to haunt the 2012 London Olympic Games. Environmental concerns now threaten to derail the London 2012 publicity train, reminding one of the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

London now has been advised to learn from Beijing's experience to restrict road traffic during the 2012 Games by Frank Kelly, professor and director of the King's College London (KCL) Environmental Research Group. Those who remember what China - especially Beijing - was made to go through during the run-up to the Games would call this a pleasant irony.

London's air quality is one of the worst among major European cities. "There have been no major innovations or advances in the way we regulate traffic emissions. So pollution is no better than it was. In fact, it hasn't improved much since the turn of the century, since 2000," Kelly says.

The heavy traffic is the main source of the city's two major pollutants, particulates and nitrogen dioxide. "If a vehicle is powered by diesel, it will produce a lot more pollution than a petrol-powered" automobile. "And unfortunately, a lot of our transport depends on diesel. All the 7,000 buses and 22,000 taxis, and over half the private cars now are diesel (powered) vehicles".

Pollution has "a lot to do" with the weather, he says. "In fact, the biggest influence on what the air quality is on a particular day is the weather As we can't control the weather, the only other option we can have is to control how much pollution we emit." He suggests London authorities either regulate transport more tightly or insist on the use of very low polluting form of transport.

Peter Brimblecombe says in his book on air pollution, The Big Smoke, that London's dirty air dates back to medieval times, when soft sea coal was burned in homes, breweries and factories. King Edward I tried to ban the high-sulphur fuel in 1306. In 1661, London diarist John Evelyn observed that the city was covered "in such a cloud of sea coal, as if there be a resemblance of hell upon earth".

In 1879, smog hung over London for four months. The Great Smog befell London on Dec 5, 1952, and lasted until Dec 9, and caused or advanced the deaths of thousands of people and became an important impetus to the modern environmental movement. It also prompted the UK parliament to pass the Clean Air Act in 1956, hastened the replacement of coal with natural gas in most homes, and eliminated the city's so-called "pea soup fogs".

The UK will spend 9.3 billion ($14.56 billion), according to Bloomberg, to build facilities for the Games, making it one of Europe's largest construction projects. But despite the huge spending, the authorities haven't done enough to improve London's air quality during the Olympics, says Kelly, whose KCL team runs 160 monitoring sites across the city and analyses data for the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

London Mayor Boris Johnson, who is also a member of the Olympic Board that is overseeing the Games' planning, has said larger vans and minibuses will not be required to meet low-emission zone (LEZ) standards until January 2012. These vehicles were originally due to be included in the LEZ from October 2010 and would have had to pay fines for not meeting emission standards.

The former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, introduced the LEZ in February 2008, which required large trucks, buses and minibuses to meet emission standards.

Johnson's cleanup plan includes buses powered by diesel-electric hybrid engines, banning older taxis and upgrading the public transport system. And his office has said that "the smooth running of London's Olympic Games will not be affected by poor air quality".

But Kelly is not so optimistic. If the weather is not good then there's a possibility that "we will have air pollution episodes". To improve the air quality, he suggests local authorities extend the LEZ and the government upgrade "all our buses and taxis as quickly as financially feasible".

But since the 2012 Olympics is less than two years away, London doesn't have enough time to accomplish the massive upgrade, he says. "Therefore, I think they'll have to consider having plans in place if the weather is not favorable and that will involve some kind of traffic regulation."

During the 2008 Games, Beijing authorities implemented tough measures, shifting polluting factories from the city to other places and restricting the number of cars on the roads by allowing drivers of vehicles with odd and even plate numbers to drive on alternate days.

Describing Beijing's measures a "successful scheme", Kelly says regulating traffic, the main source of London's air pollution, would be a useful way to improve the city's air quality during the 2012 Games. "(If) you don't have vehicles, you don't have pollution in London. That is very simple," he says.

"The last thing we want is very bad weather and not have any controls in place, and end up with headlines saying: 'Pollution concentration in London exceeds the European guidelines, WHO levels'. That will not be good publicity for London."

To have "controls in place" for eventualities, Kelly hopes that London officials would talk to their Beijing counterparts "who implemented those successful schemes". This sure is taking a green leaf out of Beijing's book on its Olympic chapter.

The author is a European correspondent of China Daily.

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