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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."
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."
Now we just need PSAs telling people to kick the air habit. Good luck with that.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
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.
It seems you fail to understand the problem. We've come to a point where we can no longer wait for some new technology to come along to save humanity, if the global warming alarmists are to be believed. We can't wait for some compressed air storage, or PowerWall batteries, or roofing tiles with solar cells in them, or whatever else is being worked on. We need to build out new low carbon generating capacity starting now, build it quickly, and displace the coal power that dominates energy production throughout the world. That includes nuclear power.
You want to see the nuclear power plants insured in full before they are built? What kind of insurance do you have against the failure of the world to reduce their CO2 production?
There is a choice, nuclear power or global warming. There is no third option because there is no time for a third option.
Just to be clear this does not mean nuclear power to the exclusion of all other energy sources. The world simply will not be able to reduce our CO2 production quickly enough if we don't build out "all the above" energy solutions. This means nuclear power must be part of the solution along with wind, solar, hydro, or whatever else you can come up with.
Whatever problem you can point out that nuclear power might have, like that insurance cost, will have to be ignored, dealt with, worked on along the way, or pushed off into the future. There isn't time to be bitching about little matters like insurance. This is a matter of runaway global warming if we can't bring down our CO2 production. Everything else is nothing by comparison.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The two come together as long as there are no expensive filtering systems after that pipe of the nastiest type of diesel burning ship engines, for example. Natural gas powered vehicles are in the minority still.
There's still a difference though, and it matters. In fact, (automotive) diesel engines are pretty much the poster child for the kind of agenda that maximizes mileage and minimizes C02 emissions, at the cost of greatly increased toxic emissions/particulates (i.e. actual "air pollution" analogous to tobacco), resulting in much worse impacts on human health.
But the alarmists just get a free pass on that, I suppose . . . anything else might interfere with their next great policy idea.
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?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
And they don't live among the type of people who pride themselves on driving huge diesel trucks and putting black smoke in everybody's face. I've said it many times before, but the best possible thing that could happen for BOTH the earth AND human beings is for the price of oil to skyrocket. Would it cause an economic disaster? Probably. Would it be worth it? You can bet your own health on it.
You want to see an environmental disaster? Go ahead, make oil prices "skyrocket". When winter comes people will be chopping down every tree in sight to burn for heat.
Oh, you want to subsidize heating fuel to counteract this? Go look at what happens in India. I had a friendly chat with a gentleman from India and he told me about how the auto-rickshaw drivers would run their gas engines on the kerosene intended for heating. Normally this would not work but desperate people get creative. They get the engine started on gasoline and then get it nice and hot, usually with the idle set high, then slowly switch over to kerosene. The engine will run, and leave a trail of blue soot behind. Enforcement is impossible because no one can afford to pay any fines. So many people do it that they can't lock them all up.
When people run out of wood to burn then they'll turn to burning whatever else they can find, plastics, rags, cattle dung, paper, paint, lubricating oil, whatever. They won't be burning them in a fancy stove with a catalytic converter, forced draft air, and electrostatic particle filtration. They'll be burning this junk in steel drums.
Go ahead. I dare you. Make oil prices "skyrocket" to save the environment. You'll wish you hadn't.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.