India: Life Inside Delhi's 'Airpocalypse'
About this episode
The episode explores the severe air pollution crisis in Delhi and India's efforts towards renewable energy and sustainable development.
In Delhi, lung cancer is no longer a smoker’s disease. It’s a breather’s disease. But the most polluted capital on earth sits in a country running five years ahead of its Paris clean power target. In the first of three dispatches from India, Tom Rivett-Carnac is joined by Dia Mirza , one of the biggest names in Indian cinema and a UN Environment Goodwill Ambassador, and Shyla Raghav , formerly Chief Climate Officer at TIME, who describes "a mix of pride, a mix of heartbreak, and, as well, possibility." With Delhi-based journalist Adnan Bhat guiding and translating, Tom traces the path India is trying to build - development founded on renewable energy, clean transport, and a refusal to accept that getting richer has to cost the earth. We meet Bhavreen Kandhari , who stopped relying on the government's air quality figures and started keeping her own. Now, she says, every citizen is a scientist. On a good day, indoors, her monitor reads six times the safe limit. And, Dr Arvind Kumar , who has been operating on Delhi's lungs since the 1980s. Here, he says, “a child becomes a smoker from the first breath.” But he has yet to see dirty air written onto a death certificate in…
People in this episode
Host: Tom Rivett-Carnac
Guests: Dia Mirza, Shyla Raghav
Topics covered
- air pollution
- renewable energy
- climate change
- public health
- urban development
Mentioned in this episode
Places: India, Delhi, Old Delhi
More episodes of Outrage + Optimism
- Blocker or Blueprint? India on the World Stage
- What’s India Building?: Tales from the Biggest Transition on Earth
- The Clock is Ticking: Forty Seconds to Explain the Climate Crisis
- Beyond Politics: Should we take the heat out of the climate crisis?
- Cheapest Energy in History. Still Heading for 3 Degrees?
- Europe’s Summer of Fire: The New Normal?
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Outrage + Optimism podcast page.