INVESTING IN CLEANER AIR WILL SAVE 30 MILLION LIVES, TRILLIONS IN HEALTHCARE COSTS
The study states that the governments worldwide could save $54 trillion in health care by investing less than half that amount in green projects by mid-century. |
Investing trillions of
dollars to slow greenhouse gas emissions would be far cheaper than paying the
costs of people sickened by polluted air, scientists said recently.
Governments
worldwide could save US$54 trillion in health care by investing less than half
that amount in green projects by mid-century, researchers said in a study published
in The Lancet Planetary Health, an online academic journal.
Such an investment
would result in 30 million fewer premature deaths related to air pollution,
said the study’s co-author Jon Sampedro, a researcher at Spain’s Basque Centre
for Climate Change. (For example, it was recently reported that exposure to
high air pollution during pregnancy could affect the growth of the human
foetus.)
The Paris agreement
reached in 2015 by nearly 200 countries committed to curbing greenhouse gas
emissions enough to keep the global hike in temperatures “well below” 2 degrees
Celsius above pre-industrial times while “pursuing efforts” for a far tougher
1.5 C ceiling.
A United Nations
draft report earlier this year projected that unless governments take
unprecedented measures, the global temperature rise is on track to exceed the
accord’s tougher target.
Authors of the study
said their calculations of steep savings could convince policy-makers to adopt
more aggressive policies to curb human emissions of greenhouse gasses that
include carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.
“We hope (that) might help policymakers move towards adopting more ambitious climate policies
and measures to reduce air pollution,” said Anil Markandya, a professor at the
Basque Centre, in a statement.
The team of
researchers from Spain, the United States and Italy ran computer models that
combined future estimates of emissions, air pollution-related deaths and
healthcare benefits for the entire world.
Achieving the
highest levels of savings would require China and India making the largest joint
investment, some US$9 trillion , to tackle climate change, the study
said.
The two countries
would then save most by having healthier populations, it said.
New investment in clean energy by country. Data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance |
Together China and
India account for about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, according
to the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
The Paris agreement
allowed nations to set their own targets to slow climate change, with no
sanctions for non-compliance.
President Donald
Trump announced last year he was pulling the United States, the world’s second
biggest emitter of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, out of the deal. China is the
biggest such emitter.
His decision
isolates the United States as the only country opposed to the pact.
SOURCE: REUTERS
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