Include maps photos links and more and you can also submit your event at Care c c dot or G.'s. This is southern Colorado's n.p.r. Station k. Or c c c c h d Colorado Springs k. Hunter k. C.C.'s Starkville n k w c c f.m. Woodland Park streaming at k. Or c. C. Dot org. Welcome to the inquiry on the b.b.c. World Service m Simon Megan. Coined the digital currency has been hard to ignore in recent weeks there's been endless speculation about it skyrocketing value but little discussion of the ideology behind. This inquiry we want to know what's the point of Bitcoin for hardcore libertarian and Arco capitalists to undermine governments Bitcoin got out of the banking system and they thought it could prevent against what they considered a surveillance they will be learning about its emergence into the mainstream and you've seen Wall Street get involved you've seen regulated funds being traded and exploring the potential of the technology that underlies Bitcoin I think it actually understates the case to say it would be as transformative as the Internet . That's the inquiry after the news. Hello this is David Alston with the b.b.c. News officials in the Afghan capital Kabul say at least 40 people have been killed in a suicide bomb attack on a Shiite cultural center in the west of the city an interior ministry spokesman said the main explosion was followed by 2 other blasts Sharia is in Kabul the organization which has a media branch called or of the press the help of a press doctor the b.b.c. And he said that there was a catalyst seminar was going on at the cultural organisation students were discussing the $38.00 invasion of Soviet to Afghanistan which was yesterday so the suicide bomber apparently has targeted this seminar no group has taken responsibility the Taliban have the night any involvement in this attack the United Nations emergency relief coordinator has so people in Yemen face an apocalyptic situation with the prospect of death by starvation disease or strikes Mark low carb list things changed in 2018 Yemen would face the biggest famine the world had seen in 50 years he called for a series of pauses in fighting between Hoofy rebels and the Saudi led coalition and said the laws of war need to be upheld everywhere you go you see roads and bridges and factories bombed and shelled and destroyed in the fighting you see hospitals with no power and water all we have in Yemen right now is the world's worst humanitarian crisis and unless things change in 2018 we're going to see the biggest famine there the world has seen in 50 years the laws of war do need to be followed and that means letting the aid in it means avoiding targeting civilian infrastructure or civilians through the military campaign Israel's parliament has voted by a narrow majority to approve controversial legislation restricting police powers the bill prevents police from declaring publicly whether they found enough evidence against a suspect you know learn new. No reports from Jerusalem Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended this bill saying the publication of police recommendations of criminal charges could leave a cloud over innocent people he said that in 60 percent of the cases in question prosecutors decided not to press charges but the opposition sees this legislation as an attempt to reduce scrutiny of corruption investigations against Mr Netanyahu himself he's a suspect in 2 cases one concerns alleged meddling in the media industry and the other receiving gifts from wealthy businessmen he denies any wrongdoing South Korea's president moon j.n. Has raised fresh doubts about a deal with Japan over the South Korean women who were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during the 2nd World War He said a 2015 compensation agreement was fraud and could not Soviet to Japan or setting attempt to revise the deal would be unacceptable. News from the b.b.c. . More critically ill Syrian patients have been evacuated from a besieged rebel held area near the capital Damascus 12 patients were evacuated from Guta on Wednesday following an initial 4 on Tuesday aid workers expect another 13 people to be evacuated today an emergency medical team is being sent to Bangladesh to save thousands of or hinge or refugees at risk from a deadly outbreak of the diptheria highly contagious risperidone disease dozens of new cases are being reported every day in the city of Cox's Bazar near the Mia unmarked border where hundreds of thousands over injure Muslims have sought refuge from violence in neighboring Myanmar 20 refugees have already been killed in the operator. The United Nations Children's Fund says the scale of attacks on children in the world's conflict zones has reached shocking levels this year a new report by Unicef says the children were being used as human bombs and human shields forced to become child soldiers and routinely exposed to brutal violence and rape he organizations deputy executive director Justin Forsyth told the b.b.c. That it was time for the un Security Council to take a stand against such abuse why is it beyond the end of 2017 the beginning of 2018 for the members of the Security Council to draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough no longer will children die in besieged cities in Syria that children will die from color and mounted Tristian in Yemen their children will be deliberately killed in some of these conflicts the Liberian Election Commission says it will publish the 1st provisional results from Tuesday's presidential election later today the 2nd round runoff pitted Joseph the incumbent vice president against George Weah a former international football star the United Nations said the poll was carried out in an orderly way who called monitoring groups said the turnout was low b.b.c. News. Welcome to the inquiry on the b.b.c. World Service with me Simon maybe in each week we bring you 4 expert witnesses on throwing one pressing question from the news. Saturday the 22nd of Main 2010 just another sunny day in Jacksonville Florida Usain a pizza delivery man walks up to the front part of an unremarkable house and knocks on the door. The man who lives there a 28 year old named last load is excited yes he likes pizza and he's expecting 2 of them 2 large ones but there's something special about these pieces how he paid for them last had offered 10000 in exchange for 2 pizzas. It was the 1st time anyone had ever bought anything with bitcoin the digital currency that exists only in computer code protected by a unique password. Back then $10000.00 because it was worth around $40.00 a generous reward for 2 pizzas 7 and a half years later in November it was worth over $80000000.00 and the dollar value of Bitcoin has doubled again since then. The value changing so quickly it could have doubled again by the time you hear this or it could have dropped sharply whatever happens there's no doubt that Bitcoin has captured the world's attention but when we already have old fashioned dollars euros and pounds that seem to be working Ok we need to understand what Bitcoin is actually for. In this inquiry we want to know what's the point of Bitcoin part one cypherpunks. I live on a hilltop about 5 miles inland from the coast I'm surrounded by redwood trees pine trees to me lives in the hills that peered down on California's Silicon Valley on one side of them Facebook and Google on the other can see the squid boats out there in the ocean when they turn lights on at night to attract the squid of the surface he bought the house aged 34 when he retired from the computer chip company Intel having made enough money on the stock market never to work again for the 1st year and just basically did nothing except sit on the beach with a can of beer in my hand when he got bored with Tim a started thinking about ideas that would ultimately lead to big queen he became obsessed with finding new uses for cryptography the art of encoding communication so that outside this concept what's being said he invited a friend David to talk at 3 we ended up walking on the beach walking in the mountains the forests and talking about these ideas for several days and it was very exciting to me and his friends brought together some of the brightest people we knew and we knew a lot of very bright people in the Bay Area computer hackers nanotechnology people at a meeting in the summer of 1992 a movement was born and thanks to the Go friend of one of the number it was given a name she quipped you guys are just a bunch of cypherpunks it had a certain ring to it and as they continue discussing ideas on email lists this name stuck so it became a cypherpunks list in the cypherpunks movement and how political was the movement a few of us were hard core libertarians a lot of people were a political We had one or 2 socialists but they sort of converted to the free market approach libertarians like to many think the state should have a smaller role is possible in that lives for example they are not a fan of taxes and they sort. That technology could help advance their political aims but as more and more interactions became online interactions would become voluntary and this naturally favors the libertarian perspective to May even write down his vision he called it the crypto m a Kist manifesto promising that the rise of this new communications medium obviously using cryptography in various ways would essentially dilute the power of government. The cypherpunks movement was remarkably productive and it led to things like Tor the software that allows people to operate online anonymously often described as the dark web bittorrent a way of sharing large files like films or music quickly Julian Assange and Wiki Leaks were also one of the major outcomes of cypherpunks he was very active on the cypherpunks list each of these technologies as had a big impact on the world and then there was the idea of a digital currency. They discussed at great length how to resolve issues like what's known as the double spending problem since digital currency can be duplicated over and over and over and over again in a way that say a pound note cannot How do you ensure that tokens once and only once the debates rumbled on until October 2008 when a paper written by someone called. Appeared online it seemed to answer all the questions the cypherpunks had been discussing. The timing is significant the world was just coming to terms with the enormity of the worst global financial crisis in 80 years and here it was a proposal for a radical new system of money cold coin. Coin could be sent person to person without a middleman uses have a password protected I pull my phone or computer which allows them to send and receive bitcoins. Central Bank. The currency is simply run by the people who use it and the spending problem every single computer volved in the currency would hold a public street of every transaction protected by cryptography. Turned out to be a pseudonym hiding an identity that remains a mystery today but I will say this whoever suppose you Dr moto is he's very much in a cypherpunks tradition and obviously was on a version of the cypherpunks list the cryptography list and may very well be someone we know from the list for Tim May On the other cypherpunks on the list what was the point of a digital currency like Bitcoin it was to bypass the banking system and set by governments to yes for hardcore libertarian anarcho capitalists to undermine governments to allow people wherever they are in the world to form these virtual communities and interact and transact with each other. A way of moving money around without governments knowing who else might be interested in that time for our next expert witness. Part to settle it. We are armed but then it was too much trouble. Getting through building security can take a bit longer when you carry a semiautomatic. Weapon picture someone working for the u.s. Tax collection agency the i.r.s. And you might be thinking of a nerdy guy in a suit Well we are still the nerdy guys in the suit we have a certain skill set but we are also all law enforcement officers so we are trained and equipped properly to do those types of duties. As an i.r.s. Special Agent Gary Alford investigates financial crimes and that's how the 2013 he 1st heard about Bitcoin I was pulled into an office and scheduled and they said what do you know about Silk Road What do you know about Tor and what do you know about Bitcoin and which I replied I knew nothing about any of those 3 things Gary Alford was told that Silk Road was being used as an online marketplace for illegal drugs up popped this website similar to Amazon it was very slick and it had pictures in different prices for different drugs and it just was I opening the mini You got to it Silk Road combined 2 of the cypherpunks offspring. And tall putting them together which hid the users in big corn which made it difficult if not impossible to track the money you had a recipe for success in terms of selling drugs on the internet it was a hit it was at the time the most trafficked site I believe on the dark web and in terms of big point at one point it was estimated that it was 50 percent of the activity in terms of transacting the big coin economy say half of all bit corn was being spent on so yes in terms of monthly and as high a believe it was into the 10s of millions of dollars as Gary Alpha delved into the Silk Road site he discovered forums where people including those running the site would chat it turns out they weren't just borrowing the cypherpunks tech but also their attitude they were somewhat anti-government so they liked Bitcoin because it got out of the bank. System and they thought it could defend against what they considered a surveillance state so it was about more than just selling drugs they had a kind of political mission they definitely had a philosophical or political ambition behind it various law enforcement agents had been looking at for 2 years already and no one had any idea who was running the site. Coming to the case fresh Garry Alford had a thought if someone was starting a business there's always problems in the beginning so if someone was to make a mistake they would make it in the beginning he looked through old forums and found someone talking about so crowed before it even launched then looked at other posts made by that same user sure enough the individual made a mistake and posted their real Google email account and ahead Russ Allbery edge emailed that come. A breakthrough but as the evidence against Rick mounted up it became clear any attempt to arrest him carried the danger that he would encrypt or destroy all the data on his computer. They needed to catch him in the act the best case scenario we could come up with is can we arrest Russ Allbery while locked into the site why break open a lack when you can maybe get someone to on like it for you they followed the suspect to a library where he sat down in the science fiction section and opened up his laptop as soon as he looked into silk road as the site administrator it was the moment to strike. 2 agents in a life we created a distraction a domestic violence kind of situation where all a male and female are yelling they're causing Mr Robert to turn another agent grab the laptop and he was arrested. Russell but now isn't that Colorado penitentiary he is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. It's the stuff of Hollywood thrillers which meant a lot of media coverage for because it was a case of no such thing as bad publicity it really brought big point into the public consciousness the big Queens held by Ross Obrecht $50000000.00 worth what auctioned off by the us or thirty's. More evidence that Bitcoins have value in the real world we treated similarly as any other asset involved in some criminal activity so at that point I guess in some ways it did give a stamp of legitimacy. What's the point of Bitcoin. So great show that Bitcoin could be used effectively and efficiently to buy and sell goods online. Even though that trade was illegal it was a landmark journey into the mainstream. So what's the point of Bitcoin now. Part 3 into the light. So in the early days a lot of us thought of ourselves as kind of pick Orner Vangelis. 'd Sullivan now research is because at George Mason University in the us she 1st came across it as an economics student around 20 10 'd 'd I remember me and all my nerdy economics major libertarian friends to me go drinking and one of my friends in particular he would tip people at the bars with big coins and the bartenders of a time were like What is this. Sullivan anticipate what's happened since I mean at the time it was kind of a pipe dream you know in our wildest dreams we would hope that it would be something that's exchanged for real money something that has real value to people in something that operates in a secure and continued manner it does now seem to be doing all those things but as we've learnt in part one it's funny isn't on the written by any government and there's no one to guarantee its security so why do you use coin now there's one group of people there called the hardliners it's kind of an inside joke on the big question forums from somebody saying oh I'm going to hold my big coins but he misspelled it h o d l they're hard liners these are people that buy and keep it quiet no matter what the hot loads think that it's best. Is a store of finally a kind of digital gold it's found created a finite number of bitcoins and with no central bank to issue more the hotness believe it will keep going up in value more than violent there are a lot of people who believe that big question can eventually become something like a reserve world currency reserve currencies seen a safe places to keep money governments and big companies hold their reserves in u.s. Dollars for example because they think the dollar is a safe currency after all it's backed by the world's most powerful government. There's other people who may use it because they're in a very desperate situation and look at a country like Venezuela that has very bad monetary management very bad governance . A hard currency they may have access to. Then of course you have kind of the unsavory element while the original so great has been shut down similar sites still exist and hackers often demand around some point all of these forces have gone together they've helped to sustain a positive price that's grown over time via the interest of traditional investors around 2013 that's when you saw the rise of a lot of the venture capital and quaint and since then you've seen Wall Street get involved we've seen regulated funds being traded so you're starting to see really the mainstreaming a bit quaint happening and I think that'll continue to happen throughout 2018 and of course with all the hype some people are just buying bitcoin to make a quick point I saw story this week where people are taking out mortgages in order to buy because I have family members calling me up out of nowhere to talk about Bitcoin saying you know how can I get involved Andre Sullivan worries that may be contributing to a speculative bubble I think that's certainly kind of frothy activity so arguably not a good way to make money quickly and the time it takes for transactions to be verified means it's also in. Not the best way to buy your lunch the 2nd process something like tens of thousands of transactions per 2nd the big point network can process 7 transactions per 2nd it's not even a competition it's a joke. What's the point of Bitcoin right now people are holding on to it or investing in it because they believe that it has value and will continue to have funny and in some cases is more reliable the money issued by government and despite entering the mainstream world of finance it's still the Bitcoin users who are in charge many of whom are firmly attached to the idea of the currency operating beyond the reach of government. A lot of the people who hold a lot of the big queens are the early adopters they are the people who really believe in the value of a censorship resistant network for some that concept a network controlled totally by the people in it holds even greater potential than the idea of a digital currency could the technology behind bitcoin actually have a bigger impact on the world than the currency itself Time for our final expert witness. Part 4 bitcoins baby. I was a bike messenger in San Francisco I was briefly a medic at the Berkeley Free Clinic in Berkeley California I was a psychological operations specialist in the United States Army after an eclectic start to his career Adam Greenfield has now settled on writing his latest book Radical technologies is described as a Field Manual to the technologies that are transforming our lives like the tech behind because every time a transaction is made in big going it is submitted to a global network of computers that are furiously running the calculations that are designed to establish the validity of that transaction each new transaction is encoded into a block of information and that block is added on to a chain of blocks representing previous transactions the technology is called block chain so the block chain does contain a history of every transaction that's ever been made in bitcoin including the amount and the time and date and the originator and who that store value was sent to it's how the double spending problem we heard about earlier was solved but block chain technology has lots of other potential uses too it turns out that this notion of something for which a record exists on every computer that is connected to the network but which you can't necessarily access without the right credentials has astonishingly broad applications in everyday life in a culture that says bureaucratized as ours is for example it could transform the insurance industry it transforms medical records educational records it could transform voting id documents could become a message sorry all your personal information could instead be stored on the block chain full name date of birth address nationality qualifications credit history medical records Mo company or government would hold all that. Information you would if you wanted your doctor or your employer to see a certain part of your personal data you could give them one off permission and you'd know if that being any authorized access if a celebrity goes to see the doctor about something sensitive and that later gets leaked to the tabloids you would be able to look back into the block chain and see exactly who had had access to that particularly sensitive information and when if you're thinking this all belongs in the cipher i section you're wrong possibly the best real world example of this is a national government of a stone you know which runs quite a lot of public processes on a blocking based system block chain could also be used for what are called smart contracts essentially contracts that don't need lawyers to enforce them a smart contract is really in the nature of a bet about the future it's a conditional statement and says if we agree on a set of circumstances and if those circumstances have been fulfilled and we agree that they've been fulfilled by such and such a date you'll release some value to me. When you think about block chain being combined with other technology like artificial intelligence the possibilities are endless you've heard of self driving cars but what about self owning cars they'd know when it's time to go to the carriage for repairs and thanks to a smart contract would then pay for the work themselves. By by taxi companies see you later lawyers passport a thing of the past with the potential to decentralize Well everything Adam Greenfield says block change is a really really big deal I think it actually understates the case to say it would be as transformative as the Internet. My own take is that in the form us of time could remake the whole game and could actually. Fundamentally alter the landscape on which human beings are able to associate with one another and act collectively that enormous. Not everyone agrees and there are currently technological limitations like the speed at which book chains work and the energy taken up by computers processing each block for the chain many think these hurdles are some mountable but Adam Greenfield has a word of warning for those a mentioning a utopian future free from the shackles of the state some of these intermediating institutions aren't simply there to add friction and frustration and difficulty to our lives they are there to protect us some of us believe that the court system is there to function precisely as a buffer against human fallibility and human frailty Adam Greenfield says a libertarian worldview is built in to block chain it's designed to decentralize and Fats was the cypherpunks vision it is oriented towards a conception of human nature which is fundamentally selfish it's oriented towards a conception of community that's only bound together by relations of contract I like to believe the world is more than that. What's the point of Bitcoin we've heard it was conceived and 1st put to use as a way of using money out of the sight of governments diluting the power of the state. The technology that underlies it could now bring that same approach to every other walk of life. But prospect suggests it's time to start asking ourselves another question. The inquiry was presented by me Simon I'm produced by Kate. Make sure you never miss an episode of the inquiry by subscribing to a podcast. Distribution of the b.b.c. World Service in the us is made possible by American Public Media producer and distributor of award winning public radio content designed to engage inform and entertain delivering the b.b.c. World Service helping Americans navigate the world around them by bringing the world events cultures at issues into focus that's a.p.m. American Public Media. And government owned land in New Hampshire City 2 very different symbols will soon share space the city wants to celebrate diversity and I don't think you can get much more diverse than putting an atheist flag over the 10 Commandments belief inclusion and the separation of church and state on the next morning edition. This morning starting at 5 am on 91.5. Field 2 of my programs looking at the problems facing our rapidly rising in the smog cities. Today it's all about pollution one of the most urgent problems facing the. Business Day Makes. B.b.c. News with David Alston officials in Kabul say at least 40 people have been killed in a suicide bomb attack on a Shiite cultural center in the west of the Afghan capital an interior ministry spokesman said the main explosion was followed by 2 other blasts dozens of bodies have been carried from the building and the injured have been taken to hospital the Taliban have denied any involvement Israel's parliament has voted by a narrow majority to approve controversial legislation restricting police powers the bill prevents police from declaring publicly whether they found enough evidence against a suspect before prosecutors announce whether to press charges the United Nations emergency relief coordinator says people in Yemen face an apocalyptic situation with the prospect of death by starvation disease or airstrikes Mark low carb said our list things changed in 2018 Yemen would face the biggest famine the world had seen in 50 years he called for a series of pauses in fighting between Hoofy rebels and the Saudi led coalition President Putin has called Wednesday's bomb blast in a supermarket in St Petersburg a terrorist act the explosion injured 13 people 8 of whom are being treated in hospital the authorities initially started investigating it as a case of attempted murder rather than terrorism South Korea's president Mungy and has raised fresh doubts about a compensation deal with Japan over the South Korean women who were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during the 2nd World War Japan has said revising the agreement would be an acceptable prosecutors in Japan of charge to form a sumo wrestling grand champion with assault after he badly injured a rival in a bar brawl in October a rumor Fuji whose Mongolian has admitted to punching his lower ranking rival and hitting it with a karaoke remote control causing a skull fracture b.b.c. News. Hello and welcome to business daily with me Jane Wakefield today in part 2 of my Smart Cities programs I'm looking into one of the most urgent and serious problems across the pollution. Gets bad I find it difficult so we're thinking of moving out of coca the doctor has recommended that I moved on to some day on the sea side. But it was much in the air inside what we realized is the air quality inside the vehicle was around 20 percent worse than outside it's a global crisis which causes health issues and slows economic growth so how can technology and how far are we from a full blown environmental crisis $79.00 degrees north of us and we were all looking at the g.p.s. And it stated and we looked around and it was see everywhere it's inescapable if you live in most of the world cities and here in central London it is no different the city exceeds World Health Organization limits for toxic air particles in every single area London's pollution made headlines in January 27th for breaching its annual air pollution limit for toxic nitrogen dioxide in just 5 days there are many who will disagree on the urgency of the issue and the London mess of the car has announced plans to build new residential properties with out parking spaces to encourage the abandonment of cars He also launched a toxicity charge in central London for vehicles which do not meet the European emissions standards which generally means those registered in 2006. And safety Pan Am c.n. Co-founded apps. So I'm a Baker Street in central London inside a car stuck in traffic which will be a sight familiar to lots of people as our cities are getting more and more congested as a result of that they're also getting more and more polluted So you think you have a solution for that tell us a bit about it. We realize there's a huge problem inside cars which most people don't realize if you think about it your car intake is right by the it is also the car in front of you so in traffic the levels of evolution a car can be can attend 20 times the legal limit for a night in dark side what we did is we have the best technology in the world at the only one that we have a 95 percent side and we've got one of the units you put in your car here it looks a bit like a giant flask with a handle Why do you think this is how easy is it to do it it's very easy so it sits behind one of the head rests on how we designed it with our advanced dynamics is so that the clean air comes out of 4 areas so it comes to both the driver the front seat passenger and to the people in the back seat what we're looking to do is integrate our technology into cars and we took some commonly factious do so into the filtration system people are becoming more aware of this issue but I should imagine very few people realize that insight they call that was actually dangerous air how did you come about discovering this what the band called Smallville and it's amazing van that has incredible equipment inside and what we do is driving surround and it measures the pollution inside and outside the vehicle and we were actually looking for outdoor hot spots and trying to look at what pollution really is outside because what the launching stations say is only a small part the problem there is much worse hotspots but it was munching the air inside and what we realized is the air quality inside the vehicle was around 20 percent worse than outside so we're seeing lots more emphasis now on the bad air that we're finding on our cities how exactly is this measured we have to keep pollutants in the u.k. When we go over the the limits on these limits set by the World Health Organization and by the e.u. With us this particular matter so in traffic even when we go to electric cars that we particular matter from the brake pads for example the other one is not dioxide and this is where we really a long way over the limits and this is a gas the schools mostly by diesel fumes in London. Dark Side is caused by diesel from vehicles and the other half is from buildings of was called construction sites for example so these are 2 things that we measure the measure by monitoring stations but there aren't that many monitoring stations so what we need to do now is have a much bigger sense an hour so people really understand what they're breathing what their breathing is what counts not what the munching stations are measuring when I bring Kolkata air pollution is a daily struggle India has notoriously poor air quality and as Rahul Tandon reports it's one which is. Ready to go I'm going to go but the solution is going to yes I've got my last interview that you get from here I'm just getting one . In his sixty's and he tries to avoid going out now because of the pollution when he does his wife multi make sure that he wears a mask she's just taking a new one out of a packet Deb and says the pollution is having a huge impact on his health as soon as the pollution level raises they find it might be because much heavier and after a short few steps the beating gets heavier and heavier till the pollution level it comes down or I get into a room. Beautifying do live in demand it gets bad and I find it difficult so we had thinking of moving out of Calcutta The doctor has recommended that I moved on to or somewhere on the sea side 2 years back I had to do that in fact to get out of Calcuttans differently a month and go on a phone that bidding was much easier and I could walk I could claim steps which I couldn't do in Calcutta. I've left the safety of Devon's flats and I'm on the busy streets of Kolkata Let's have a look at a map on my phone which matches pollution now according to the World Health Organization cities across the world should have a rating of 10 on the pm 2.5 if I look at my Kolkata 441 you can imagine what. Sort of damage that's doing to people's health let's get off the streets and away from some of these buses that are pumping out blood Humes and go and talk to doctors to chair my chair as a leading doctor in this city exposure to pollution doesn't lead to lung problem I mean next for you there's no question of anything getting better I don't think so because other than the vehicular pollution you can see the suspended dust particles from the dust on the street which I don't think is going to get any better and so much of construction going around. Time to brave the streets of India again you can feel the pollution in the air you can almost taste it so what sort of impact could pollution have on India's economy which he chatted he is an expert on pollution at the Post Institute there was a survey in 2016 by the World Bank and they say that if you keep. The total welfare loss the g.d.p. For India went down at only 8.5 to 9 percent. What we are seeing now in India is a greater debate about pollution I'm not the magic and I'm Shelley I'm actually in I'm finding Absolutely because I wake up every morning just like gasping for air it's gagging I can feel it in my throat and I'm not even sure if India has any I have structured will be with this I can see trucks and lobbies viewing out black smoke and nobody stops them India has many challenges pollution is one of them and if it doesn't get to grips with it soon it could have a huge impact one of the world's fastest growing economies. So powerful causing what is the cause of air pollution and how is it seen across the. Small cities will Congress in Barcelona I caught up with you showed me some of these amazing interactive maps which track the so-called city these graphics including fires and pollution hotspots as well as crime rates and natural disasters the. Idea is that with more data it becomes easier to tackle he explains because it will show you to visually vision here to give you a sense. Of how it works for me so what you have here is a visualization platform put together by the Create lab at Carnegie Mellon University and these are basically the world's top artificial intelligence or box engineers and they've worked with about 15 different partners including my institute to put together 30 years of satellite data that stitched together in a seamless animated sequence and then we've layered it with every conceivable filter you can imagine from rising sea levels to deforestation to changes in our climate in terms of air quality to energy renewable use to nutrition to migration including refugees and internally displaced people you name it we've got it on this platform and what all of that data telling us in a nutshell Well the nutshell is that our climate is worsening it shows us that there's complexity in our planet in terms of the various kinds of anthropomorphic and environmental risks that we face but also by personalizing it by making it by critical interactive platform that users can engage with we can literally look up your own neighborhood your own home it allows users to understand just how that complexity affects them personally so it's that interactive component of the platform I think which is part of its greatest power so we're now seeing a quality. There's an awful lot of what one does not believe represent Well we're looking at tonight oxide we're also we could look at pm to the parts per 1000000 units of pollution in the air blue in this map is not a bad thing yellow and red are bad and what you see is a high concentration as you might expect precisely those areas that are generating the most in terms of manufacturing outputs industrial outputs so right above Western Europe especially France and Germany and down in towards eastern Europe you see a big area of red did oh in parts of little points in Eastern Europe. And you'll probably see some big red over China the story of this map I think has been the growth of pollution above Chinese cities right now so this is an index of levels of nitrogen and right here if we can overlay it this is pollution levels measured by parts per 1000000 unit and what you're seeing is over a 15 year period just the way it's distributed around the planet you're going to see here is a Japanese satellite that takes a moment or 2 to load because it's an enormous quantity of data and it captures all the fires seen from space over a 3 year period and you're going to see basically carbon that's being emitted by these fires and these are fires that are as a result of you know forest fires there are also the fires that are coming off gas flares fires that are being emitted by steel plants and what you're going to see in a moment when it comes up are some really extraordinary blooms above and below the equator as you see slash and burn taking place literally people who live in pastoral areas who are burning land so the green shoots can grow for their livestock but the amount of carbon being generated by this is phenomenal you'll see the u.s. Shale revolution and you'll see a massive output in terms of emissions coming from gas wells and others as well as industrial flares above steel plants in China what you see right here is a map of Shanghai Shanghai is literally going to go underwater as a result of water level rises depending on the level of temperature change in the bottom of the corner of the screen you have 0 to 4 degree Celsius keep in mind that the Paris agreement said 2 degrees is our threshold look what happens when you go just above 2 degrees 2.5 to Shanghai there were 3 there were 3.5 it's disappearing it's disappearing but it's not just obviously it's not just China think of Bangladesh Bangladesh is literally built into water deltas what you'll see here is literally all of Dhaka disappearing and it's not his real estate that's going to be going what happens. Large tracts of area become salivated so it becomes unusable for farmland You also see all sorts of clogging of and the salmon ization of underwater reserves these visualizations are very powerful and very beautiful as well but what's the message that we can take from them 2 countries grappling with increased urbanization the problem right now is what were mesmerized and hypnotized by our growing cities and we're excited about the the mega cities in this global cities around the world the fact is we don't actually know that much about what's happening in the vast majority of cities or the global south or 90 percent of future of population growth is going to take place and here I'm talking about Africa and Asia in particular so a real challenge right now is actually generating just basic information to give to our policymakers to our bears to our urban planners so they can start making informed intelligent decisions about how to invest on what kinds of technologies they ought to purchase on on what kind of partnerships they should be invested in they provide close to real time data they provide remote sensing unstructured information that otherwise wouldn't be available and they allow us to start reaching out to other cities experiencing similar kinds of situations to start conversations about what kind of stopgap measure should they be introducing what are the combination of technologies they ought to be investing in one of the ways that they can both adapt and mitigate this kind of this kind of threats so I think these visualizations by making them highly personal by making them interactive by making them predictive looking into the future not just retrospective I think they can really pursue potato kind of revolution in thinking about using evidence as a basis for policy you're listening to business day Jane Wakefield as we know a u.s. President Donald Trump withdrew as a national level from the Paris climate change. Which set global goals for adoption . But across the u.s. The world leadership on this issue is being taken up not just a national level. Director of the global initiatives program at c 40 cities. C 40 is the network of the world's largest and leading cities that are working together to tackle climate change and help manage the impacts like climate change is already bringing to our cities so see 40 was an organization started by mayors for Mainers working very much at the political level to help mayors inspire one another learn from each other but also we work with the technical officials in cities who have to implement the mayor's vision and get the job done in terms of delivering climate action so for cities and the leadership of cities we've really seen a clear target and a level of ambition articulated around that that means they are going to reduce their emissions significantly over the next decade leading to peak those emissions by 2020 and ultimately be carbon neutral by 2050 we have bold statements of commitments with America's pledge hundreds of cities states regions businesses and universities saying we are here to deliver the Paris agreement we will not walk away from that commitment the reality is we can't continue to live like this I mean you look at what's happening in Delhi but also we see it on the streets of London I mean the pollution and the impacts of climate change are literally killing people so it's not acceptable for us to continue with business as usual but aside from the clear health problems in many parts of the world one stock example of the impact of pollution and climate change is felt in the Arctic. For America and now I work. With Arctic recently and we think about cities and climate change and the challenges for cities that are very urbanized But you're talking about cities right at the extremes of the world so what are the challenges faced by those cities in the Arctic. It's warmer and we see in the region and Russian Arctic where places that were we haven't named because they are always are there any more I was a research wrestle. 79 degrees north with Russian and Polish researchers and we were all looking at the g.p.s. And it stated land and we looked around and it was see everywhere so it's so I mean we I don't know we have already all inspired by the known we have islands or land that has become islands and of course the big worry is the big glaciers like the one in Greenland because if we actually have a meltdown of the big glaciers and they start moving now we don't know how that will affect the Gulf Stream we don't know how it will the fact every That like this the billet of the of the of the relations between the oceans as well and what we see in Arctic Research is rather interesting because they're getting thinner it has one of these weird facts also that Planck time is actually getting some so it's so many things we didn't know that we are experiencing now and the intensity of climate. In the Arctic is of course leading the way and providing many answers but also many questions well it seems Mez are increasingly the people who will make the decisions which have the most immediate impact and those decisions will shape the future of our cities and planet for me Jane Wakefield That's all from business day today for more please download our podcast. You're listening to witness the b.b.c. World Service history program with me Monica Whitlock and today we're going back to the freezing winter of 1941 in Leningrad now some Petersburg where I've been speaking to Mikhail Barbara one of a team of climbers whose daring exploits helped save the city from aerial bombardment during World War 2. Was 16 when he made the trip that set the course of his life he planned to train as a mountaineer. In there working to go to work at the door my longing to climb began when I 1st set eyes on the mountains as a boy and Leningrad I won a skiing competition the prize was a trip to the elbows mountains those mountains were so beautiful they stole my heart so our train and I learned to climb. But a year later in June $1041.00 Nazi Germany launched its lightning advance on the u.s.s.r. Smashing its western frontier and descending on its principal city. Was called up and wounded in those very 1st weeks he was invalid home to his parents when the Leningrad authorities decided to disguise the city's golden domes and spires both to spare the historic buildings and to stop the German bombers using them as bearings and so a small band of climbers 2 women and 2 men was summoned to the headquarters of the Leningrad front it was decided to start by coating the biggest cathedral sometimes it's in paint it's gold 100 meters rose above the very center of Leningrad close to the Hermitage Museum and the Admiralty. You know with the minutes we got going in mid August 1st we painted over the big cross and the small we could reach these by steps then we roped ourselves up and got going on the maimed the wounded sailors from the hospital helped by holding up buckets of paint a special gray paint they used for ships the color of the sky we worked fast we got it done in less than 3 weeks the weather was pretty good the city was under fire not too heavily it went really well. But on September the 8th $141.00 the ring of Nazi artillery closed around the city the blockade of Leningrad had begun for the next 2 and a half years the population will be trapped in what would go down in history as the longest and deadliest sea in modern times. Mikhail was still only 18 years old he and the other climbers moved on to the Admiralty a vast building with a 70 meter golden steeple on the very top perch to weathervane in the shape of Peter the Great ship. The body of the spire is made of a local but there's nothing to hang on to there where the pics are equipment and another problem how to deal with the ship at the top of the spire still worse the gold leaf was frail and would react badly with the Navy issued paint instead of painting the climbers were told to cover the spire with canvas glue which. Is your model for the girls and women from the Navy sewed the canvas like a skirt on the floor of the Admiralty building gym they gathered it if we do take in the canvas loops the wind would have blown it away and maybe damage the spire backhanders was having 500 kilos half a ton We used a block and tackle to hoist it up the spine and then we secured it and cut the cords so the canvas came tumbling round the spire at our girls climbed up and sewed the canvas down with huge needles this long week off. Weak the lead climber all go fearless over clung to the Admiralty spire armed with her huge needle and fighting to subdue half a ton of wet and billowing canvas. When all he was up there 5 or 8 metres below the top of a German fighter plane attacked. The bullets flew all around but didn't hit or we hold it down as fast as we could She was precisely that stop with fright she'd even seen the face of that Nazi pilot that was the 1st time the Germans attacked us Times not the last the Germans are still in the southwest of. Rush through the growing dark and cold as autumn turned to winter the climate scaled spires and domes but they had no special equipment just ropes and warm sweaters they et the standard Leningrad Russian just one piece of bread a day and a handful of grain in the depths of winter the climbers approached that toughest challenge the Cathedral of St Peter and Paul with its $122.00 meet a bell tower it was then the tallest off a duck's building in the world. Precinct minus 4243 Celsius once even minus 44 then there was the hunger all the time if there'd been no doves and crows in the cathedral precinct would never abated we netted them and ate them the crow is tough but you have to boil it for ages but. It was delicious. We were so scrawny and weak that we couldn't get home after work my house was nearby but my mate I'll always live further away so we decided to sleep in the cathedral by the tombs of Peter the Great in this family we got ourselves a sort of like a sail we had a little who made stove for warmth we dragged in a huge mattress from a bombed out house and there we lived the immense bell tower stood out loud. A beacon in the snow just hit us up with the mud like that up against really oh it was dreadful and the fire out immediately for the Germans saw that the last reference point of their artillery was disappearing and they could clearly see us idiots clambering around trying to paint the spider out they fired at us but we couldn't work during the day we were too exposed so we painted after dark and it was like a nightmare because the paint from you paint the spire and come back the next night and the paint already frozen and falling off it was really awful the climbers managed to keep the paint liquid using a blowtorch working quickly and repainting constantly night after night a week after week high above Leningrad the climbers had a special perspective of the city besieged. With the beauty of the value of the store them to the Oregon you always night we could see what people in the city couldn't they were in their houses at night in their bomb shelters but asked to balls we could see everything on the floor of the barrier and. We cried sometimes watching such beauty such horror the city standing and fighting to the death everything blazing so hard to believe now the climbing team was disbanded early in 1942 those were the very bleak months of the see $100000.00 Leningrad civilians were dying each month most of starvation because fellow climbers Arlie on the Luise died of hunger so did his parents young with her return to the front but before he did he was witness to another exceptional Leningrad moment in. The lead climate old anti husband Misha were both musicians and Misha played in the famous performance of Shostak a. Richest 7th Symphony in besieged Leningrad. It is to follow them concert I was at that concert it was the 9th of August $942.00 played is by Alan and he invited me I was sitting right up close to the musicians in the front of money he was close to the Army hospital and many wounded soldiers came to listen it was summer so they were just in their dressing gowns some of them in white nightshirt people were sitting in the aisles in the gallery How could we have surrendered. To the. Broth went on to marry the love of his life a bomber pilot called Larry Sam he became a well known effete and skied for the Soviet Union in the 1952 Winter Olympic Games because it is now the only surviving climber of Leningrad he still lives in the city when we met there he told me he still fit at the age of $94.00 and was only now giving up sport. Social media it's an open space to express your opinions but things can get ugly fast maybe you're used to the bickering and the trolling but why put up with it at what point would you just log off forever I'm Joshua Johnson social media fight or flight next time on one essay from w e n u and n.p.r. 18 today at 10 am on 91.5 k. R.c. C. Southern Colorado's n.p.r. Station. I'm Shankar Vedantam science reporter for n.p.r. New research shows there's a simple way to become happy.