Pollution had been seen as the price of progress, but the smog of 1952 woke the public to the terrible toll. The National Society for Clean Air (NSCA) says of the smog: "It marks the dividing line between the general acceptance of air pollution as a natural consequence of industrial development, and the understanding that progress without pollution control is no progress at all."

But it took years of compaigning to get the Conservative government to accept reform. To cover up the true extent of the smog disaster the government invented an influenza epidemic. In fact research has shown there was no epidemic and that the thousands more people who continued to die for the next four months did so because of the air pollution.

The government's policies were at least partly to blame. To maximise revenue the UK was exporting its clean coal and keeping the sulphur laden "dirty" coal for UK power stations and domestic fires. The result was a combination of soot laden air and droplets of sulphuric acid lying in a 200ft deep blanket across London, leading to the worst smog ever recorded.

Lies, stupid cover stories, and profiteering at the public expense -- nothing new.

I hope to return to micropower as a subject in its own right in a future diary RSN, with some theory, some success stories, and some urban as well as rural applications.

The difficulty of resolving local autonomy with polity-wide strategy is persistent.  Whether it is local cost imposed by distant benefit, or general cost imposed by local benefit, there is a skewing of CBA and  a serious challenge to democratic process.  This is imho one of the very good reasons for seeking solutions with least-toxic byproducts and minimum radius -- rather than the "extract and excrete" model we have been using since the kickstart of industrialism.  But more on this later.  All very good challenging questions and fodder for multiple diaries!


The difference between theory and practise in practise ...