NHS asthma inhalers - not grasping climate change at all
The National Health Service is insisting that everyone change their asthma inhalers because climate change:
Patients will be told that inhalers are bad for the environment as they contain a hydrofluorocarbon propellant used to carry the medicine into the lungs that has a “greenhouse gas effect”. They will be given a leaflet showing the carbon footprint of each type of inhaler, and told that the total dosage from a single blue inhaler has a bigger carbon footprint than a 75-mile journey by petrol car.
This is to get climate change wrong. Which is a pity given all that work that M’Lud Stern put into his 1,200 page report.
The NHS has estimated in the past that inhaler emissions account for about 3 per cent of its carbon footprint, with 60 million prescribed in England each year.
One observation is that inhaler emissions do not accrue to the NHS. They are Scope 3 emissions and so accrue to those using the inhalers, not the NHS. In the same way that the emissions from my diesel car accrue to me not BP or Shell (or, as it often happens, Galp).
Another is that this is a pitifully small number to be concerned about. 75 miles by car is, to use average mpg, about 2 gallons of fuel. -ish, which is the level of accuracy we need here. That’s - again, -ish - 9 litres. And we know from the Stern Review what the social cost of carbon is, that $80 per tonne CO2-e. Which becomes, through the miracle of arithmetic, 11 pence per litre of fuel used. Or, running at our same level of accuracy, £1 per inhaler, £60 million for the country for the year.
That’s the damage being done. That £60 million. That’s The Science and don’t you go arguing with that you denier you.
Which then brings us to the logical mistake being made. Logical mistakes usually having greater import than mere errors with sums. Our task is to attempt to maximise human utility over time. That’s the whole construct of our very concern about climate change itself. This means that those things which increase human utility more than the loss they cause should continue to be done. It is only those things where the loss from climate change is greater than the benefit gained from doing them should cease to be done.
Depending upon which search result you believe an inhaler will last a couple of months to a year. Average that out and say 2 inhalers per year per asthma sufferer. The use of inhalers saves 500,000 people a year from choking on their own lungs. Or, if we want to minimise that benefit, the feeling that they are choking to death on their own lungs.
This is, we would submit, worth more than £60 million in human utility. Even as a societal benefit, leaving aside the feelings of those who would have to do the choking. After all, it would be at least mildly distressing if someone were to choke to death next to one on the Tube without there being anything that could be done. Just to confirm that, an inhaler contains 200 doses and the average treatment is two doses, so our £1 of damages is a cost of 1 pence per treatment. It’s worth a penny of damage to the pretty butterflies to stop someone choking on their own lungs - or feeling as if they are? We think we could get the Benthamites on side with that, yes.
500k non-choking, £60 million in climate damages - b’ggr the climate then.
Now, yes, it could be true that the new inhalers produce a greater health benefit. Medicine does advance after all. But that’s not the point we’re making here. The one we are is that the ceasing to use the blue inhalers should not be driven by climate change concerns. Simply because a proper evaluation of those climate change concerns leaves us with the answer - don’t be damn stupid, use the inhalers.
If only people actually bothered to understand, grasp, the actual arguments about climate change.
Tim Worstall