OPINION

Ideas for cleaner air

Re: “Chiang Mai rejoins list of top 10 polluted cities”, (BP, March 26), “Petition filed in push for equal citizenship”, (Life, March 25) and “Historic new rights laws fight old bias: Same-sex marriages shake things up”, (BP, Feb 16).

I recently flew from home on Koh Samui, where even on an island far from the mainland, nearby Koh Phangan has not been visible for weeks because of pollution. I accept that this is a worldwide problem but that does not excuse inaction.

I arrived in Bangkok and even before leaving the airport my eyes were already feeling itchy and my nose congested. The pollution levels are lethal. There is no question that almost everyone living in the capital will suffer some adverse health effects and have their life shortened.

Pollution comes from three main sources: vehicles, stubble burning, and industry, but can be dramatically reduced by government action.

Announce today that only non-polluting vehicles can enter the city in, say, five years time and no one will buy a petrol car tomorrow. Buses, taxis, tuktuk and commercial vehicles must not be exempt.

Fine or reduce funding of any local authority that does not stop stubble burning. Also demote or move any police chiefs in those areas.

Serve notice to polluting industries that if they continue to pollute they will be shuttered.

Maybe there are different solutions but inactivity and soundbites are killing us.

Phil Cox

Tesla sparks fly

Re: “It’s all about ideology, not oligarchy”, (Opinion, March 25).

The rampaging damage inflicted on Tesla EVs is anti-Musk violence manifest at its rawest.

Regrettably the reputation of Nikola Tesla, the Serbian innovator who invented the rotating magnetic field, the basis of the induction motor and alternating current generator, is now soiled by his name’s co-branding with Elon Musk’s business empire.

Nikola is to me the antithesis of the anti-science and anti-immigrationcrusade ignited by the Musk-Trump axis.

Tesla the 28 year old would likely be barred from entering the recidivist United States of 2025, where he immigrated in 1884.

One wonders how many other Nikola Tesla and his innovator class would have been denied entry or evicted to service Trump’s anti-immigration and anti-humanist fervour in the past three months alone.

Alas, Tesla the man, a Serbian-American genius, would not have been given the opportunity in our hateful age to be conferred the Edison Medal as he was in late middle age in 1917, the highest honour from the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

Joseph Ting

Ranking row

Re: “OEC disputes ranking, cites data gaps”, (BP, March 25).

It is natural for the Office of the Education Council (OEC) to challenge an unfavourable ranking by the pollster of World Population Review.

The OEC said the ranking conflicted with data the review said it sourced from the annual Best Countries Report by US News and World Report, BAV Group and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

That report covered 73 countries and showed Thailand in 48th place.

The World Population Review did not give any other information related to the ranking, so to say that Thailand was near the bottom could be unfounded and needed to be considered and interpreted carefully, the OEC said.

But the OEC report lauding Thai literacy as reaching 99% has been fixed in one’s mind for so long it has blinded us from considering other factors. Are we resting on our laurels or a victim of our success that has discouraged us to do better?

It is praiseworthy for the secretary-general of the OEC to accept that the World Population Review’s revelations as a wake-up call for Thailand to “to fix its education system and develop it further”.

Songdej Praditsmanont

Same-sex law mystery

Re: “Beyond coming out”, (Life, March 10) and “Historic new rights laws fight old bias: Same-sex marriages shake things up”, (BP, Feb 16).

I am trying to get to grips with gay marriage, the effect on nationality and how the law will now work.

In the past a Thai man has been able to marry a foreign woman and she can get Thai nationality.

Does this mean a Thai man can now marry a foreign man who can call himself the spouse and claim nationality?

Could I divorce my wife, announce I was gay, marry her brother and do away with the unfair immigration procedures I’ve suffered for 34 years? Just a thought.

Steve Merchant

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