Much the worst problem is in London, shamefully the European capital city most polluted by nitrogen dioxide. Vehicles are responsible for half of this pollutant, and 80 per cent of the particulates, in London air.
And London is by far and away the largest city in the EU, more than twice the size of the closest, Berlin.
More people, more cars, more air pollution. It\’s not that tough, is it?
He also gets his knickers in a twist in the section about mastication.
and the problem is? Is NO2 the new CO2?
Sorry, not to contradict your point – but by what measure is Berlin the second biggest city in the EU? It’s nowhere near. Paris and Madrid are surely the comparators.
Pat: Depends how you define city (metropolitan area or city limits). By metropolitan area, it’s London, Istanbul, Paris, Milan. Berlin isn’t even the biggest in Germany – Düsseldorf-Neuss and the Ruhr are both bigger.
By city limits though, it’s Istanbul, Moscow, London, St. Petersburg, Ankara, Berlin, so if you exclude Turkey and Russia you get the order that Tim’s referring to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_cities_in_Europe and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_Europe for the full lists.
You really have to wonder what they were thinking up at Canary Wharf when they decided to give Geoffrey Lean a job. He’s like Hutton or Jenkins or Toynbee in that, proffered a stick, he will invariably grasp the wrong end. His sad eco-wibbling always puts me in mind of the wimpy vicar from Dad’s Army.