The combustion of fossil fuels are a huge health hazard as to a recent United Nations report, 3.3 million people died from outdoor air pollution in 2010. An additional 3.5 million people die early annually from indoor air pollution.
I had noted in a previous Cleantechies article that air pollution has a massive financial toll of up to 102 and 169 billion euros annually. These figures let you wonder how much they would be if they were accounting the global sum…
As the World Health Organization notes, going for cleaner energy sources – ie. renewables – could easily halve the amounts of deaths by 2030.
If this six million people figure makes you wonder for comparison, please note that there were about 1.7 million AIDS-related deaths in 2011 and malaria killed about 660,000 people in 2010.
So if we are making efforts to eradicate those two illnesses we should do a whole lot more to combat fossil fuels pollution.
So on top of solving the climate crisis, going for energy efficiency and renewable energy sources would also improve everyone’s health. This is another win.
Staying addicted to coal, oil and gas is a lose lose lose situation while going for solar, wind, hydro and others is clearly a win win win…
What are we waiting for exactly?
1 comment
The situation is pretty bad in Asian countries particularly India and China where millions of die every year due to air pollution and government take little initiative to educate users to conserve energy. My little brother had to be taken to hospital after we discovered that his health is deteriorating due to massive pollution in our city.
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