Coal-loving Poland struggles with killer smog

[TomSea]

Coal-loving Poland struggles with killer smog

Smog kills tens of thousands of Poles each year, yet environmental activists say the right-wing government of the coal-loving nation has been dragging its feet on combatting air pollution.

On some winter days, a grey haze obscures the lights of the Polish capital's skyscrapers and the air smells like burning plastic.

"It's starting again. Warsaw is second on Air Visual, just after Kathmandu, and ahead of Calcutta and New Delhi," says Maria, a Polish mother of three young children, as she checks an air quality monitor on her smartphone while sipping her morning coffee.

Read more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/coal-loving-poland-struggles-with-killer-smog/article/514837

I would have never known.

[Fishrrman]

Time to start selling the Poles anti-pollution equipment to burn their coal cleaner.

They're going to keep burning it, one way or the other.
Might as well do so as cleanly as possible...

[Free Vulcan]

Another liberal media rhetorical switcharoo. Is Poland polluted because of coal, or because of antiquated, inefficient power plants?

[dfwgator]

During the Communist-era, Coal Miners were portrayed as National Heroes. They made even more than doctors.

[Right_in_Virginia]

Time to start selling the Poles anti-pollution equipment to burn their coal cleaner.

They're going to keep burning it, one way or the other.
Might as well do so as cleanly as possible...

Great idea. 

[TomSea]

I could go to image search and "Warsaw" and "Smog", yes, they definitely appear to have this situation.

[Suppressed]

I could go to image search and "Warsaw" and "Smog", yes, they definitely appear to have this situation.

It's not just Warsaw, but all across Poland. Krakow and other cities are just about as bad.  People are wearing masks, and they've made some days free for public transit when it's gotten really bad.

[txradioguy]

Another liberal media rhetorical switcharoo. Is Poland polluted because of coal, or because of antiquated, inefficient power plants?

A little of both plus the fact that if they made a switch to Natural Gas...they'd have to pay through the nose to Gazprom which is a Russian company.

Putin has shown no problem recently with using the threat of higher gas prices to keep protests from other European countries over his illegal actions in the Crimea and in Ukraine.

As for the smog problems...perhaps it was just the time of the year (March 2015) but they didn't seem to have much of a smog problem in Warsaw or the other two areas I stayed in.