Urban Air Pollution in India is Among the World's Worst

India is about to overtake China as the world's most populous country (6 years from now, in 2022, according to UN demographers), and most of that increase is showing up in the cities--as is true all over the globe. We've heard a lot about the terrible air pollution in China, especially Beijing, as I've mentioned in the past. But Delhi's air pollution may even be worse. I discussed this last year, but new reports have just come out with more details about the deadliness of India's urban air. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal defines the air in Delhi as the worst in the world, and suggests that living there cuts several years off your life expectancy.

Living in India’s capital city New Delhi could shorten your life by six years because of the intensity of the air pollution there, a new report says.

Inhaling tiny air pollutants reduces the life expectancy of Indians by an average of 3.4 years, with Delhi residents losing 6.3 years, the most of all states, according to a new study by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

Those living in West Bengal and Bihar, which have high levels of air pollution, face a reduction in life expectancy of 6.1 years and 5.7 years respectively.

This analysis is based on population modeling combining data from the 2011 Census of India with air particulate data. More information about the specific causes of the pollution appeared in a separate story published yesterday by Nature.com. 

The pollution, which comes mainly from combustion of wood, coal, gas, diesel and crop residue, is worst in the winter, when wood-burning peaks and cold-weather inversions trap pollutants close to the ground and cause spikes in the daily average of above 600 μg m−3. Late last year, the levels prompted the Delhi High Court to declare the city a “gas chamber”.

The Nature article notes that India has been working to improve the problem, following in the famous steps of Los Angeles and Mexico City, but continued population growth compounds the problem at every step. 

Melinda Gates Ramps Up the Emphasis on Contraception

Thanks to Debbie Fugate for linking me to an article about the Code Conference a few days ago at which Melinda Gates reemphasized her support for contraception.

Melinda Gates is on a mission to help women around the world decide when and if they have children.

"What I'm trying to do is bend the curve," the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said in an interview with Walt Mossberg at the Code Conference on Wednesday morning, joined by her husband, Bill Gates.

That curve represents the pace of getting 110 million more women around the world access to birth control, which given current trends would take until 2035. Melinda Gates says the foundation is trying to shorten that to 2020.

"I have really gone all in on family planning," she said. If a woman has voluntary access to contraception and can choose when she becomes pregnant, "you don’t commit her to a life of poverty."

If you saw my post about the Gates Foundation CEO's report, then you know that I am very happy with this confirmation of the Foundation's goals. Contraception can save the lives of children already born, and can save the lives of mothers themselves. Indeed, a report published in the Lancet a few months ago noted that the global drop in maternal mortality was well short of the UN goals. Unplanned and unwanted pregnancies represent one reason for this, especially if they end up leading to an unsafe abortion. Preventing births and saving lives go together, and they are part of the long-term recipe for saving the planet.

More Undocumented Chinese Are Crossing the Border Into the U.S.

Today's San Diego Union carried the interesting story in the local news that the number of undocumented immigrants from China apprehended trying to cross the border near San Diego has risen dramatically over the past few months. The report by Tatiana Sanchez is behind a subscription, but here are the key bits:

The number of unauthorized Chinese immigrants coming to San Diego has skyrocketed in recent years, the result of a lucrative smuggling industry, mass emigration from China and a diversifying pool of unauthorized immigrants settling in the United States. Border Patrol agents in the San Diego sector apprehended an estimated 663 Chinese nationals between October and May, compared with 48 Chinese nationals last fiscal year, five in fiscal 2014 and eight in fiscal 2013, according to data provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Before that, “we just weren’t getting (Chinese nationals),” said Wendi Lee, a spokeswoman for the Border Patrol. Lee said criminal organizations involved in smuggling maximize their profits by transporting Chinese immigrants, often charging each several thousands of dollars to get them across the border. “We’re talking anywhere from $50,000 to $70,000 per person,” said Lee. “The further you travel from, the more arrangements these criminal organizations have to make, the more expensive it will get.”

Obviously these are not huge numbers, but this is local to San Diego. Nationally, the number of Chinese immigrants to the US--both documented and undocumented--has been steadily rising over time, as the Migration Policy Institute reported in January. The timing of this increase in people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border suggests the possibility of human traffickers convincing would-be migrants that they better get across now before "a wall" is built if Trump is elected. 

The World's Demographic Divide

Two tweets today provided an illustration of the world's demographic divide--the gap between the low birth and death rate rich countries and the not as low birth and death rate not so rich countries. For a nice overview of the issue, I recommend you read the PRB Bulletin by Mary Kent and Carl Haub published more than a decade ago. This is not an issue that is going away. Here are the contrasts from today's social media. First was a tweet from PopulationGeography (@PopGeog) referring to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about how declining populations are challenging (meaning harmful) to the rich.

Shrinking populations in the advanced world is one of the biggest single challenges to global economic growth, according to the former chief executive of the Australian Government Future Fund. Mark Burgess, now chairman of Jamieson Coote Bond's advisory board, said on Tuesday that governments and central banks needed to start tailoring policies to fit the reality of slowing or negative population growth and shrinking workforces. "The thing about demographics, just to be absolutely clear about this, is that we've never in history run sophisticated economies with sophisticated financial systems through declining populations," he told an investment conference in Sydney. "It is a truly unique event." He said shrinking populations "affected all asset prices in strange ways".

At nearly the same time came a tweet from the Population Reference Bureau (@PRBdata) referring back to a 2015 report by demographer Monica das Gupta in which she lays out the problems of countries on the other side of the demographic divide trying to feed their growing populations.

The global problem of climate change poses the greatest threat to the least developed countries even though they have contributed relatively little to the current stock of emissions causing the problem. 

Much of the developing world will experience climate-change induced declines in agricultural output, poorer health outcomes, disruption of rainfall patterns, and more frequent natural disasters, rendering some areas less habitable or inhabitable, and hinder poverty reduction and economic growth.

When you look at the graph she prepared (see below) of possible food growth scenarios, the single most important thing to jump out at you is that the trend in food production in the recent past has been essentially flat, yet a growing population demands more food. 

So, the rich worry about the price of their assets, and the not rich wonder if they will have enough to eat. 

Zika is in the US--Sort Of

Yesterday brought the terrible news of a baby born with microchepaly in New Jersey to a mother with the Zika virus. As ScienceAlert reports, the woman was pregnant and knew she had the virus when she arrived from Honduras to visit relatives in New Jersey. She apparently traveled to the U.S. with the express purpose of seeking care in this country, thus creating this somewhat unusual situation. The only other confirmed case had been in Hawaii, so this was the first in the continental U.S.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says there are now over 300 pregnant woman in the US with "laboratory evidence of possible Zika virus infection". Not every baby that’s born with Zika will have microcephaly or brain defects, but the CDC estimates the number between 1-13 percent.

The CDC has also advised pregnant woman to avoid travelling to the areas where mosquitos have been shown to carry Zika. This has also put a strain on the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, with some athletes speaking out about those competing this summer.

As reported on MSNBC this morning, all known cases of the Zika virus currently identified in the U.S. have been contracted outside of the country. The concern, of course, is that one or more of the several hundred people known to have it could be bitten by a mosquito in the U.S. and that could then accelerate the spread.