It's not always about climate change
The problem with the evil du jour is that everything, rightly or wrongly, gets ascribed to the evil du jour. As here, where we have new speculations about the deaths and injuries caused by air pollution:
The boss of the NHS has declared an air pollution "emergency" as a major study today shows it causes hundreds of heart attacks and strokes every year.
Simon Stevens says we must act now to avoid so many "avoidable deaths" after figures reveal days of high air pollution trigger an extra 124 cardiac arrests, 231 stroke admissions and 193 hospitalisations for asthma across nine major UK cities each year.
Certainly something we should investigate, yes. The first part of that being to work out the societal cost of these injuries and the societal cost of reducing air pollution enough to eliminate these same injuries. But sadly that custodian our of health care monies doesn’t suggest anything so sensible:
In response to the findings Mr Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, said: “As these new figures show, air pollution is now causing thousands of strokes, cardiac arrests and asthma attacks, so it’s clear that the climate emergency is in fact also a health emergency.
“Since these avoidable deaths are happening now - not in 2025 or 2050 - together we need to act now. For the NHS that is going to mean further comprehensive action building on the reduction of our carbon footprint of one fifth in the past decade.
“So our NHS energy use, supply chain, building adaptations and our transport will all need to change substantially.”
The heart attacks and strokes are not caused by CO2 emissions. Nor by methane, or CFCs and so on. Thus taking action on carbon footprints isn’t the point at all.
In fact, a goodly part of the problem is from earlier attempts to reduce carbon footprints. The encouragement of diesel with it’s higher NOx and particulate emissions was because it reduces carbon dioxide such. The rise in wood stoves and burners was precisely because it was seen as carbon neutral over the cycle - they are significant sources of particularates. And these strokes and heart attacks are being caused by the NOx and particularates…..
It’s unfair but accurate to insist that some part at least of these excess injuries are the result of earlier attempts to reduce carbon footprints. Which does make redoubling our efforts to increase the cause of the problem look an odd way to reduce it.
It is also both fair and accurate to point out that if the answer is always the same whatever the question then we are not dealing with science but religion. “Reduce carbon footprints” may often be the correct answer, even mostly the right answer, but the moment it becomes the only answer it is as with “toss another virgin into the volcano”. It’s superstition, not science.