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The number of days when Kyiv residents choke is growing every year. It is not surprising that Kyiv took the last place in the annual Rating of the ecological state of the regions of Focus magazine - as a city where it is dangerous to live.
On the weekend of January 16-17, people were having fun: frost, snow, there was not a single hill in Kyiv that someone's cheerful butt would have leveled. I, going to the store for groceries, coughed terribly. Passers-by scattered, and they can be understood.
I was ashamed, I wore a mask, tried to breathe deeper, which only made it worse.
Then I paid attention to the air quality widget on my smartphone and began to suspect that I, so to speak, had nothing to do with it. 160 pollution points for several days in a row. At a temperature of -10-18 ° C, this can simply go unnoticed, the body will be fooled by snow and frost, the sense of smell dulled.
The apotheosis of pollution and the apogee of power came on the night of January 19-20 - the counter showed an incredible 204 points and cast a purple threat (in the photo above): they say, if you went out, you should only go in the direction of Baikove cemetery.
In such a situation, the Kyiv City State Administration should have made a statement, an appeal to residents to leave the hills and stay at home, take some action. None of this happened. Saving citizens is not a function of the mayor's office. Especially after the elections have already been won.
If a year ago, during the grand smog over the capital, officials in retail said something indistinct about abnormally warm winters, temperature inversion, fogs and burning peat bogs, then in January 2021 these versions would definitely not have fit.
Probably, decisive measures are needed. Which ones? I am not an ecologist, but since ecologists are silent, I can assume that in severe frosts it is necessary to check what they are heating with, what briquettes they throw into boilers in the private sector, what they heat their production facilities with in industrial zones (and there are still many operating firms there).
Check what the oligarch-owned thermal power plants are heating with, and quarrel with them. Prohibit vehicles from entering the city or restrict them and quarrel with car owners.
You can do a lot of inconvenient things, and then lose either the electorate or financial support. It's better to wait it out, especially since no one noticed.
However, the number of days when Kyiv residents choke is growing every year.
Those who cannot change sleeping areas to country cottages independently acquire air purifiers, oxygen cylinders - everything that, in their opinion, will allow them to last at least a couple of minutes conscious, in order to have time to close the windows with a wet sheet during the next "inversion of lies".
It is because of all the above that it is not surprising that Kyiv took the honorable LAST place in our annual Rating of the ecological state of the regions - as a city where no one thinks about ecology. As a city where it is dangerous to live.
By the way, an important factor due to which our authorities once fought for environmental cleanliness is the economic state of the country.
Solving environmental problems requires decades, new technologies, planting forests in the Carpathians and imprisoning corrupt officials, which is also not a matter of one five-year plan. But we can fall into a financial abyss at any moment.
The list of threats here is frighteningly constant: default, inflation, collapse in energy (then it will definitely not matter who heats with what) and a hole in the budget that can stop social payments.
At the end of this series of upcoming apocalypses, you are no longer surprised at how Hollywood sees our country in 15 years. A detailed review of the recently released Netflix movie "Outside the Wire" will not add to your optimism, but don't worry: 2021 Russia is just beginning.
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