Air Pollution Is the 'New Tobacco,' Warns WHO (theguardian.com)

The head of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said air pollution is the "new tobacco" that is killing 7 million people a year and harming billions more. "The world has turned the corner on tobacco. Now it must do the same for the 'new tobacco' -- the toxic air that billions breathe every day," said Tedros. "No one, rich or poor, can escape air pollution. It is a silent public health emergency." The Guardian reports: "Despite this epidemic of needless, preventable deaths and disability, a smog of complacency pervades the planet," Tedros said, in an article for the Guardian. "This is a defining moment and we must scale up action to urgently respond to this challenge." The WHO is hosting its first global conference on air pollution and health in Geneva next week, including a high-level action day at which nations and cities are expected to make new commitments to cut air pollution.

Tedros said: "A clean and healthy environment is the single most important precondition for ensuring good health. By cleaning up the air we breathe, we can prevent or at least reduce some of the greatest health risks." The WHO is working with health professionals not only to help their patients, but also to give them the skills and evidence to advocate for health in policy decisions such as moving away from fossil-fuel-powered energy and transport. "No person, group, city, country or region can solve the problem alone," he said. "We need strong commitments and actions from everyone."

Comments

Another report from the U.N.

[Crashmarik]

Seeing as deaths from air pollution have been falling for the last 30 years

https://ourworldindata.org/air...

And even China's falling, it seems this is another case of an activist looking for a cause.

Bringing up Tobacco seems rather odd as well especially since there now seems to be a war on vaping heating up.

Re:Another report from the U.N.

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm. The report you cite itself says: "Globally, it's estimated that outdoor air pollution resulted in 4.2 million deaths in 2016; this represents an increase from 3.4 million in 1990."

I believe you've confused falling with rising. And yourself with someone who has a clue.

The report also says: "In the period since 1990, China's increase in pollution-related deaths appears to be slowing with only a small increase since 2010. In contrast, India's mortality rate from outdoor air pollution continues to increase."

I'd like to be charitable about what went on with you here, but if we're honest with ourselves (I know, I'm asking you to break the habit of a lifetime, but you can close your eyes and mind again afterwards, don't worry), the truth is you're a stupid angry rightwing prick looking for a reason to think you're clever and left-wingers are stupid, and you fucked it up. Because you're stupid.

Re:Another report from the U.N.

[JaredOfEuropa]

Look at the graphs about halfway down that page: Death rate from ambient air pollution, and Life years loss from particulate matter. Those are the figures that matter (since they reflect the per capita effects). And you can see that every region has had a remarkable decline since the 80s, with pretty much every region still seeing a downtrend. Not that we shouldn't improve things further, but looking at those numbers I see a success story rather than a "silent health emergency": things have already gotten much better and are improving still.

Re:Another report from the U.N.

[shilly]

I'm aware. But he made a claim about deaths, not death rates.

Re:Nuclear Power

[blindseer]

Why do we need nuclear? What is wrong with existing renewable and storage technology?

The problem is we can't build it fast enough. Wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal take too much material. We don't have enough capacity to create sufficient amounts of steel, concrete, and other materials to build enough renewable energy to displace coal.

Here's an article that gives just a taste of the problem:
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...

A very comprehensive analysis was done here:
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

And here:
https://www.withouthotair.com/

If you want to tell me that we can wait until we have the infrastructure to build enough cement kilns and steel mills to keep up with the closing of current coal and nuclear, as well as increased needs for these materials not just for energy generation but also other construction, then I have to wonder just how urgent this need is to hold off global warming.

Even with over-building capacity it's still much cheaper than nuclear, and one of the primary objections to doing anything about climate change is the cost.

Nuclear is as cheap as wind and solar wish they could be. Some of the math is here: http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

We need to do this quick, and it has to make economic sense or it won't happen, and renewables offer massive opportunities for jobs and growth.

I agree, we must be quick. That's why we need to build wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, AND nuclear. If nuclear is not included then the world will fail to meet any CO2 reduction goals declared by the United Nations. Nuclear power makes economic sense. Any problems of costs for nuclear power are NOT in engineering, materials, or labor. The only costs associated with nuclear power that might make it uneconomical is political and regulatory. China figured out how to make nuclear power economical. One thing they do to keep costs down is shoot any protestors that hold up construction. I'm not saying we should do that in the USA but we can keep them from filing frivolous lawsuits and imprison them for their dangerous antics that interfere with solving this problem.

I saw in another thread someone claiming (jokingly I assume) that Greenpeace is causing global warming. Well, that's not far from the truth. The science shows that nuclear power would allow for a significant reduction in CO2 production, but Greenpeace opposes this. The science shows that cutting down trees for lumber, and planting new trees in their place, would create a considerable carbon sink for the CO2 we already produced, but Greenpeace opposes this.

Science tells us we need nuclear power or we will fail to reduce our CO2 in any meaningful time frame. That's why we need nuclear power. We need to include nuclear power in our solution to reduce CO2 or we will see CO2 output grow with all the global warming that comes with.

IT'S SCIENCE!! Are you a science denier?

Re:Nuclear Power

[AmiMoJo]

A blog and a couple of books challenging peer reviewed papers. I'm sorry, I don't have time to go through them in detail but if we just look at the second book "Roadmap to Nowhere" we can see that in chapters 5 and 6 it talks about how much of certain materials, including steel, are required. Even if we assume that those numbers are right, their argument seems to be that "this is a lot, and we might need to increase capacity" without much discussion of why that isn't possible.

In fact it doesn't seem like a problem at all, more like an opportunity. There is a big global over-capacity of steel, for example.

When they talk about the cost of nuclear, they seem to be ignoring the current reality of the situation. The price of new plants being built today is extremely high, and that's with things like free insurance and other subsidies. They seem to think the cost could come down... Well, maybe, we can debate that, but what is undeniable is that the cost of renewable energy is falling rapidly already. It's already pushing coal out, let along nuclear.