In a bid to reduce air pollution, the Chinese government, this year, is planning to scrap five million cars that are past their shelf lives. The number is big, but it is an effort to keep the pollution levels down.
A news piece published in Reuter claims that a total of 5.33 million vehicles that don’t comply with the pollution norms will be taken off the roads. Out of this 6,60,000 vehicles are from Hebei and about 3,30,000 from Beijing. These two cities are in the list of the seven most populated cities of China according to the country’s pollution report of 2013.
This plan is a part of the Chinese government’s five year initiative (2011-2015) to achieve 17 per cent reduction in carbon emissions. The plan is to get a reduction of about four per cent in 2014 and 3.5 per cent in 2015 to achieve this target.
According to the Indian transport laws a vehicle’s life span is 15 years, and some cities also ban the operation of these vehicles which includes cabs and buses too. The lack of strict monitoring to ward off polluting vehicles is not yet in place. We need a law in place to classify and allow older vehicles that emit lesser carbon fumes as compared to older vehicles that fail the emission tests. This should help cities like Delhi and Mumbai which havethe highest number of vehicles in the country.
Source: Reuters
Image Source: Pixgrove
