Admit it, Bangkokians. You like your vicarious danger. It could be because Bangkok hasn't the regrettably typical dangers of many cities. There are no cyclones, big earthquakes, volcanoes. So when world-class pollution hits, Bangkok folks are extraordinarily concerned but they also exhibit a weird, well, pride.
When Bangkok briefly cracked the Top Ten of the world's most-polluted cities last week, the mood was self-consciously celebratory. Also, Bangkokians are livid that the government couldn't stride in and dissipate the filthy cloud.
Two highly rated academics with no credentials in weather or climate used their professorial authority to explain that Bangkok's haze wasn't our fault. It was Cambodian farmers burning their fields. A few editors even awarded front-page coverage to this tale of foreigners-did-it shuck and jive.
When the Pollution Control Department boffins with relevant backgrounds did their investigation, they debunked the claim of a Cambodian plot. (For one thing, if Cambodians were blowing smoke, why was nowhere in between Battambang and Bangkok smog-covered?)
By Tuesday, the Cambodians-dunnit claim was dead in the water. So we thought. On Thursday, a three-lettered academic from Silpakorn University contacted the Klong Toey headquarters of a certain daily newspaper to offer a lengthy explanation of his proof that Cambodian farmers were causing the smog in Bangkok.
Typical cost of a four-year bachelor's degree course at Silpakorn: 1,235,150 baht. Foreign students, add 240,000 baht.
Then there were water cannons -- high-powered and more surprising and messy than a Songkran ambush. Their diesel trucks' engines have to be kept running, spewing loads of PM2.5 pollution which is what the cannons are combating. The water is -- and we are at our most polite and euphemistic here -- of questionable worth.
Bright-eyed and energetic after a week in Europe, Section 44-appointed Bangkok governor Pol Gen Aswin Kwanmuang returned, to talk spraying. "It's better than doing nothing," he said many times.
Really? Doing nothing is often the best course. "Yannapat Boonkate" thought the guv's claim so worthy of public attention that he ramrodded a flash mob of fellow Facebook nerds for a Bangkok Spray-In. Using a hand-held spray bottle, each Facebook crowd member was capable of firing dozens of teaspoons of mist into the Bangkok air before their squeezing hand gave out.
Who says satire is dead?
For real "Do Something" trumpery, though, one must contact the Federation of Thai Industries and the Ministry of Industry, whose resigned minister is electioneering for the general prime minister. Realise there is no evidence or even accusation that factories add a gramme of PM2.5 pollution to Bangkok air. (Their output is generally PM10 smoke.) The general prime minister made a specific point of saying so.
Therefore, as of midnight tonight, in the greatest display of virtue since fire trucks were dispatched to the Ratchaprasong intersection, 1,300 factories will "slow or suspend operations" to fight smog they didn't emit. Because everyone knows it's better to Do Something than do nothing.
Gen (Ret) Prayut played politics on the smog and he proved a regular Yuja Wang at the keyboard of manipulation.
First, it wasn't a big deal (don't want to alarm the tourists). Then, literally overnight, it was a heck of a big problem. Thank goodness people are spraying water. Give us more!
Then, the general prime minister did the most amazingly purely political thing he has done, ever.
He urged drivers of diesel-fueled cars in Bangkok and its outskirts to leave vehicles at home on Friday and the weekend -- "abandon" was the exact word -- and ride the buses and trains to work and recreation.
It's brilliant. If the haze mostly disappears by this afternoon as forecast, it will be because of his intelligent call to cut down the traffic. If it doesn't? It will be because not enough patriotic people believed and acted upon his genius.
Hero or merely a clear-headed visionary? Either way, come Monday morning, the battle against the haze will have a true champion.
