The Guardian view on May’s air pollution plan: all mouth, no trousers | Editorial
Theresa May recognises that air pollution is one of the biggest threats faced by millions of citizens: last November, after a judge ordered the government to produce a plan to tackle an avoidable cause of up to 40,000 premature deaths, she told MPs: "Nobody in this house doubts the importance of the issue of air quality. We have taken action, there is more to do and we will do it." Roll forward six months to last Friday, and, after a further court appearance and another ruling, a plan was finally produced. It came out almost without warning on the day when most media organisations were preoccupied with the aftermath of the local elections. In the previous week, some ideas had been trailed all of which seem to have been too radical for inclusion in the plan, at least for a government on an election footing.
What emerged was a vacuous, flimsy ragbag of half-formed proposals that try to pass the buck to local government while denying it the powers councils need to act. ClientEarth, the group of environmental lawyers that brought the case, says the plan is barely worth the paper it is written on. They think it is actually weaker than the plan that was ruled inadequate in November. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, called it "woeful".
Continue reading...