PM Yingluck readies state agencies to combat annual haze pollution in North

[rametindallas]

This seems like an opportunity to get some use from that blimp the Army bought and doesn't use in the South. Fly it over Chiang Mai with high-powered, infrared, telephoto lens equipped, high definition cameras and when they see smoke, take photo evidence and call for forest rangers/police to rush to the scene of where the fire is being started so it can be extinguished. A Chinese-Thai friend of mine told me a story of how the Chinese-Thai shopkeepers on Rattanakosin Island (Old Bangkok) would, during Song Kran, burn their shop houses down to collect the insurance money. There were, on average, dozens of unaccountable fires each year. The, then military, government began shooting the self-arsonist and the practice stopped. The story is illustrative of the fact that Thai people don't change their habits easily. The above tactic, involving the blimp, would have to be paired with draconian penalties for getting caught setting fires so that land-owners would find it more difficult to hire people to burn off their land. The costs in health to the larger public far, far exceed any benefit the land-owner might get from burning. If it comes down to it, have a reward waiting for farmers who don't burn and which is forfeited if the land does burn. I have lived on the U.S. Gulf Coast where the marshes were set on fire by hunters every fall and at times had to drive miles away from my home to have fresh air to breathe. I hate air pollution and self-inflicted, unnecessary air pollution is the worst.

[rametindallas]

"...collaborate with others and to plan the solution ahead of the problem."

Simple solution. If there is burning on ones property the owner/resident gets arrested and heavily fined. Yes, the solution is easy, but having that solution implemented is as difficult, if not impossible, as the road safety program. In the end Mai Pen Rai will always win out.

so many land owners are 'absentee' and they are politically connected so a different solution will need to be explored.

[rametindallas]

must be doing some good. last year all the rice fields around where i live and travel were plowed under...

i saw no LOCAL burning. many people commented on the unusually lack of annual smoke invasion.

it worked to a degree here in chiang mai last year. hoping for a repeat again this year.

"haze"??? interesting terminology i think. smoke is more appropriate, of course.

Last year had record smog in CM/CR all the way to Lamphun. It was in all the newspapers. The problem is getting worse and not better.

[blueyeshk]

Pai also shows it can compete with the worlds biggest industrial hubs since yesterday visibility is below 500 m

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