In a hard-hitting article in today’s New Zealand Medical Journal, a group of senior health professionals call for NZ to halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. The spokesperson for the recently formed Climate and Health Group, Dr Alex Macmillan says:
Climate change has been described as the biggest global health threat of the 21st century, and the substantial health benefits of action should be fully included in decision-making, as should the harms of inaction.
According to the paper, the health benefits of action to reduce emissions include:
- A low carbon transport system that involves more walking, cycling, or using public transport will reduce road traffic crashes, pedestrian and cyclist deaths, urban air pollution, and the impacts of obesity and cardiovascular disease.
- A low fossil-fuel society necessarily means reducing animal-based foods in our diets. Moderation of the use of animal products will—by reducing the amount of saturated fat and meat in the diet—reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease and bowel cancer, and similarly with carbon-intensive fats and refined sugars for the obesity pandemic.
- Reduced rates of overweight and obesity, as well as obvious health improvements, will also reduce the climate change impacts of extra fuel consumption needed for transporting extra weight and contributing extra food consumption and waste. Food itself has important implications for climate change through production, distribution, quantity, composition, and waste.
- Improvements in the efficiency of residential energy use could reduce mortality and morbidity from the extremes of heat and cold and reduce the vulnerability of the poor to fluctuations in the price of energy.
The article continues:
These important health co-benefits will dramatically reduce the cost to society from taking strong action to mitigate climate change, and thus failure to count these benefits could have serious consequences
The full article is not available on the web at the moment, but as soon as it is I will link to it here. In my view it provides an excellent overview of the issues as they confront New Zealand, and also issues a strong call to the medical community to advocate for action on climate change. Here’s the conclusion:
Health professionals cannot be inactive observers of this process. We have a significant role and responsibility to lead this challenge—and we must be involved wherever possible.
We have overspent our atmospheric resources and now need smart
sustainable solutions. The pace of climate change is accelerating.
Halving the current level of emissions is urgent, responsible, just, and possible.
Inaction would be negligence and malpractice on a global scale.
Negligence and malpractice on a global scale… Where does that leave New Zealand’s government, one wonders?
What qualification in climate do these dudes have, always the question when the ‘religion’ is questioned by us sceptics?
“always the question when the ‘religion’ is questioned by us sceptics?”
and also always the question when sceptics want to avoid responding to the points raised by questioning those raising them. (this happens frequently on both sides of the debate)
This report (from what I gather in the summary) is grounded in the medical field. They are not analysing the science they are expanding the climate science to infer the implications for the health sector.
Are we prepared for widespread malaria and other tropical diseases here in New Zealand?…
Emissions reduction might just have some positive consequences if looked at from a health perspective.
So, in a little under 10 years, when the baby boomers will be hitting the very energy-intensive health system in booming numbers, our esteemed practitioners expect there to be a 50% reduction in GHG?
Walks like a duck…
“our esteemed practitioners expect there to be a 50% reduction in GHG?”
Not “expect” – try “think it would be of benefit to society if there were”.
Halve carbon emissions in ten years. How about New Zealand set a goal of landing men on Mars by 2020 as well?
PeterB, SteveW, AndrewW
How about engaging with the issue at hand. There are four bullet points in the post.
You got a problem with any of them?
If yes…tell us what and why
If no…then accept there are substantial benefits of actions to mitigate climate change that are 100% independent of where you stand on the fact of AGW.
Andrew, obviously the bullet points have nothing to do with AGW, AGW is just being used as an excuse for these people as an argument for imposing their views on what sort of lifestyles people should lead on to the rest of the population.
Taking the bullet points one by one:
“A low carbon transport system that involves more walking, cycling, or using public transport will reduce road traffic crashes, pedestrian and cyclist deaths, urban air pollution, and the impacts of obesity and cardiovascular disease.”
Without cycleways to separate cars and cyclists, I’d expect to see more cyclists leading to more cyclist deaths. The only urban air pollution problems that I hear about these days are from wood burners on cold winter mornings. My observation is that the more obese people in society today are those that eat a lot and aren’t very active. They eat a lot because they like to and can, and they aren’t very active because they don’t need to be active in their occupations, or lack there of. Take away their cars and they ain’t all going to buy bikes to get from A to B, they’ll take a bus, a taxi, or order the pizza delivered, and carry on playing X-Box.
“A low fossil-fuel society necessarily means reducing animal-based foods in our diets. Moderation of the use of animal products will—by reducing the amount of saturated fat and meat in the diet—reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease and bowel cancer, and similarly with carbon-intensive fats and refined sugars for the obesity pandemic.”
Where’s the evidence that “A low fossil-fuel society necessarily means reducing animal-based foods in our diets.”? Drystock farming requires a very small input of fossil fuels compared to arable farming.
“Reduced rates of overweight and obesity, as well as obvious health improvements, will also reduce the climate change impacts of extra fuel consumption needed for transporting extra weight and contributing extra food consumption and waste. Food itself has important implications for climate change through production, distribution, quantity, composition, and waste.”
They’re arguing that increased exercise reduces food consumption, this is dead wrong, increased exercise increases the bodies food requirements.
“Improvements in the efficiency of residential energy use could reduce mortality and morbidity from the extremes of heat and cold and reduce the vulnerability of the poor to fluctuations in the price of energy.”
This means better designed and insulated homes require less energy to heat and are more comfortable, we’ve got some real Einstein’s here.
Hi AndrewW
So you agree with no4 – that’s good.. you might think it a ‘no-brainer’ and I hope a lot of people will these days..but it isn’t very long ago that people were arguing that extra insulation was unaffordable.
With No3 I dont’ see it the same as you. I think they are saying that less obese people means less weight to transport and therefore lower fuel consumption. I think the effects are pretty marginal. Surely you agree with the second part – that food production is a major fossil fuel consumer.
Similarly with 2. It is well accepted that meat production is a less efficient use of land than growing your protein from plant sources. And hence a vegetarian driving an SUV has a lower carbon footprint than a meat eater driving a Prius. As population behaviour changes in recognition of carbon footprints we can reasonably expect less meat to be consumed.
For number 1 you appear to assume that there will be just as many cars on the road…that doesn’t make sense…if there is greater use of public transport and more people on bikes it follows that there will be less cars on the road. It doesn’t take a great reduction in car usage to make a big difference to congestion and bike safety – as witnessed in Christchurch when petrol prices were so high a year ago. Anyway – why not have cycleways?
This sort of stuff really bugs me.
These points are somewhat accurate. The general argument that reducing fossil fuel use will have health benefits is correct.
However that does not mean this should be an argument for the nation working to reduce emissions, or even halve them.
If exhaust fumes from cars cause respiratory problems should the policy solution be;
a) reduce GHG emissions from all sectors and all gases by half
b) require devices such as catalytic converters to be fitted
To my knowledge none of the main greenhouse gases create health problems on there own. There are plenty of problems with breathing exhaust fumes but none have anything to do with CO2.
If a coal fired power plant is modern and new and not in an urban area how is bad for health?
“If a coal fired power plant is modern and new and not in an urban area how is bad for health?”
Hmm. No, I can’t think of any health problems that could be caused by living several metres under water, can you?
“living several metres under water”
Oh! you have swallowed the green lines hook, line and sinker! So… just how is CO2 going to cause people to live under water? Will there be no land left in 2100??
Still haven’t answered that question, have you? How much more warming will it take for you to admit that warming is happening?
Obviously, you won’t believe that CO2 is actually a problem until there has been enough warming to melt all the ice sheets and raise sea levels by several metres. Even then, you probably still won’t accept that it was CO2.
Sorry, don’t get on here as much anymore.
How much warming will it take…
You know back in 1998 (and until 2005ish) I was actually more or less convinced. If I was asked to pick a position I would have said AGW, although without your certainty and enthusiasm.
“When the facts change I change my mind, what do you do sir?” (OK I admit I stole the use of that line in this context, Carter was it??)
You may claim that we have not had a cooling trend, however I am sure you will agree that temperatures have not shown a warming trend for 11 years. Can I say that?
It would require the re-establishment of a warming trend, and for this to be sustained for at least 3 years, with one year greater in warmth to 2005.
I have not set very strict criteria because the non-AGW believers are predicting a cooling trend, therefore only moderate warming is required to cast significant doubt on their theory.
So what’s your argument here? That so long as it is built away from humans and no humans are near to it, that it’s fine?
I can’t see how you can think this argument is valid. For a start, the mercury will find its way into our food chain slowly but surely, assuming that the world fish stocks don’t collapse entirely.
Secondly, just how far off did you want to section people? How much land must be cordoned off? What about the people who must work there?
Your apologist arguments really don’t bear scrutiny.
Yes but if the problem is mercury, address the mercury. Dont tax people for CO2
You think polluters should be allowed to pollute without penalty?
Interesting.
No I never said that
Huh? You said “what’s wrong with a coal power station”. This is a post about health issues. So it turns out what you meant was, “what’s wrong with coal? Oh, I don’t mean all the things that are actually wrong with it, I mean what’s wrong with the part of it which isn’t a direct, immediate, physiological pollutant, and by the way I’m also going to completely ignore the fact that there is such a thing as knock on effects of global warming affecting health”.
All class, R2.
Did you also know that there is a high correlation between myopia and AGW denial?
No, this post is about the benefits of climate legislation on health.
I am saying the best way to address health issues is not through climate legislation but by addressing the direct causes.
Is charging a coal fired power station for CO2 emissions the best way to reduce its mercury emissions?
This will likely cause investment in CO2 reducing technology to crowd out investment in mercury reducing technology.
Is a tax on agricultural emissions the best way to reduce heart disease? No this will likely cause research in reducing agricultural emissions to crowd research that may have occurred looking into ways to reduce the fat in cattle and sheep. It may also crowd out government spending on health care research and investment.
>Did you also know that there is a high correlation between myopia >and AGW denial?
Could be a false correlation there, Sam .. perhaps they’re both a function of age 🙂
There’s a definite correlation with political affiliation – no surprises there. Sacrosanct personal freedoms and all that.
Now Carol there is no need for ageism! Dr Jim S and I are both the same age – and I suspect older than Roger – since he shut his science books in 1975. The difference is that we continued to keep ours open!
Sorry Macro! No offence intended. Note to self: don’t assume that Roger is representative of his age group. At least I hope not..
Here’s R2 addressing Mercury.
R2 @ 9
I would expect good policy to set an emissions standard and remove barriers to innovative solutions – possibly add in a few enablers for preferred solutions. Then leave it to ‘free enterprise’ to determine how best to achieve it.
I would then expect EV’s to bubble to the top fairly quickly.
Of course your example (on both cars and coal power stations) ignores a couple of pressing issues…a) we have concerns about burning fossil fuels the go beyond respiratory issues. b) peak oil (or sustainability in general).
Andrew
It is not an either or solution. Add on technology has made the petrol internal combustion engine about as clean as it can be. To reduce emission further they are looking at increasing fuel efficiency (less fuel used less emissions). The Prius was designed to be an ultra low emission vehicle (ULEV) the means to that end was fuel efficiency. Although it is sold on it fuel consumption figures not on its low emission profile.
Diesel ICEs still can be improved further but this relies on better quality (low sulphur) diesel fuel.
iirc Biofuel emissions are far less noxious.. not necessarily anything wrong with using chemically stored energy which is combusted – it’s very dense.
I am told that vehicles running on biodiesel made from recycled restaurant fats smell a bit like they’re frying chips…
The two main sorts of biofuel are alcohol (ethanol and methanol) and biodiesel (usually from the esterfication of fats).
Whether they emit less emissions depends on what is used to produce the fuel, how emissions are measured (tailpipe versus lifecycle) and what pollutant is being assessed (e.g. CO2 or local pollutants). For example biodiesel reduce emissions of particulates, HCs and CO but can result in increased oxides of nitrogen (can be dealt with with a cat converter).
Alcohol fuels are similar but due to lower energy content a slight increase fuel consumption.
The key question from a sustainability perspective is always what feedstock and the production chain that is used to produce and deliver the fuel.
My expectation that biodiesel will be used to displace diesel for freight and probably aviation and electricity for land based passenger transport. I don’t see much of a role for alcohol due to land competition issues and low EROIs limiting it to use near source.
However, none of these options will provide the level of transport service that we currently get from petroleum. So we also will need to change our expectations, behaviour and socio-economic systems. I think that these changes will be exciting and over hte long term beneficial.
I’m working with PLA at the moment and when it burns it smells like popcorn 🙂
The racing motorcycles of the 1950’s and 60’s used Castrol R based on caster oil. The smell was unmistakable and to we young petrol heads at the time simply “Divine”. Caster oil was added to the petrol tanks of many a street cafe racer to produce a similar effect!
Showing your age Macro….Roger won’t be able to accuse you of callow youth (as he has to many other if not you).
Not much role for alcohol Doug? I’m disappointed..I was going to plant a field of beets and buy a still…and if some of it made it to the fuel tank that would be a happy accident.
In transport I mean in transport. Always a role as a social lubricant.
The problem with alcohol at present is the low net energy. By the time you have grown, collected and transported it to final use you can be in negative net energy country. I do see a role where it is sourced from a waste stream, processed on site and used on site or adjacent.