Toxic air is killing our kids. Parents must demand clean energy

Bhavreen Kandhari is an environmental justice campaigner and co-founder of Warrior Moms.

My twin daughters have been strong, athletic junior basketball players throughout their teens and now in their early 20s. Getting to this level has taken hard work, and close care of their health and bodies. 

Yet my daughters are entering adulthood with the lungs of lifetime smokers, through no fault of their own. Persistent coughs, wheezing, sniffles, and respiratory infections are routine for children who breathe polluted air. 

Why? Because they grew up in the most polluted capital in the world: Delhi.

More than 1 million children live in Delhi, and they are being poisoned with every breath. This was confirmed when researchers found in 2021 that nearly one in three school children in Delhi has asthma and airflow obstructions. 

Essentially, this means every child in Delhi is a smoker from birth - or even before, given that the particulate matter spewed from vehicle exhaust pipes has been found in the lungs, livers, and hearts of foetuses.

Delhi is particularly bad, but the reality is that 90% of children worldwide live with air pollution that exceeds the levels deemed liveable by the World Health Organization (WHO). 

Globally, this contributes to the deaths of nearly 2,000 kids under five every single day, and 7 million people per year including 2 million in India. 

It’s shameful. The solutions are known and available, yet political and business leaders continue to cling to the burning of poisonous fossil fuels.

We, united as concerned parents around the world, must stand up and pressure them to put the health and wellbeing of our children at the core of their decisions. Governments and businesses must stop the burning of coal, oil, and gas, and transition quickly and fairly to clean forms of energy. 

To start, children’s health should take centre stage at the WHO’s conference this week on air pollution in Cartagena, Colombia, which brings together government representatives, health professionals, academics, and mothers - including myself. 

We need solutions that will quickly lead to clearer skies, like limiting internal combustion engines from city centres, car idling on residential streets, and wood-burning in homes. In many cities, we can incentivise people to use buses and trains, walk or cycle instead of driving.

Smog clears as soon as the burning stops. We saw this in Delhi in 2020, in the iconic photos of the India Gate against clear blue skies during the Covid-19 lockdown. Imagine if our kids could run and play freely against those bright skies, without stopping to cough, sniffle, catch their breath, or worse.

We are seeing positive steps in cities and countries around the world. India has a goal to reduce particulate matter by 40% by 2026, compared to 2017 levels, with a focus on the cities with the worst pollution and traffic congestion.

A recent study revealed that London’s air quality has significantly improved since that city expanded its Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ).  But there is still a long way to go to bring global air quality in line with the WHO’s guidance.

Parents move mountains for the good of their children every day of the week - and they can do it on air pollution too. More and more parents are realising that fossil fuels are harming their children. They are becoming an unstoppable force, demanding clean, renewable energy to protect those they love.

This is why I’m in Cartagena, along with other determined mothers from across the Our Kids’ Climate network. Parents have also been taking to the streets - in New York, Warsaw, Quito, Cape Town, London, Mexico City, Delhi and elsewhere - to demand clean air and clean energy for our children.

Children can’t choose the air they breathe. So it’s on us, as parents, to fight for them.