Carbon tax will make Australians healthier, cutting health costs and also productivity losses
Health economists have evaluated the health benefits associated with emissions reductions in Europe, China, India and Britain, and the findings suggest improvements for health are available immediately – and can amount to billions of dollars saved annually from avoided ill health and productivity gains.
Carbon price’s health bonanza, The Age, Fiona Armstrong June 26, 2012 “………There is however an untold story of good news associated with this, the beginnings of our national emissions reduction strategy, which has been completely overlooked in government communications and in other commentary – and that is the improvements in public health and economic savings that accompany emissions reductions. For while there will indeed be climate benefits, they are far off in the future and will only be realised by a considerable ramping up of emissions reductions, far beyond a 5 per cent by 2020 target or a $23/tonne carbon price.
The health benefits however are available much sooner than that.
Health economists have evaluated the health benefits associated with emissions reductions in Europe, China, India and Britain, and the findings suggest improvements for health are available immediately – and can amount to billions of dollars saved annually from avoided ill health and productivity gains. For example, in 2010 it was predicted
that cleaner air from an emissions reduction target of 30 per cent by
2020 in the European Union would deliver savings worth 80 billion
euros a year due to reductions in the incidence of respiratory and
cardiovascular diseases (associated with air pollution from burning
fossil fuels).
So, contrary to the popular myth in Australia, emissions reductions
can actually offer a win-win-win – that is, improvements in population
health as well as economic savings as well as a reduction in climate
risk.
The European and US modelling on the health benefits of emissions
reductions (from which we must extrapolate potential benefits for
Australia since this work has not been done here, yet) suggests that
the savings from avoided ill health can substantially offset the costs
associated with cutting emissions – and may even exceed them.
For example, studies of the adverse impacts on the community’s health
from the coal industry in the US suggests that industry’s impost on
human health outweighs the national economic benefits of the sector;
in other words, coal is costing the US more than it earns due to the
illnesses and deaths caused by the harmful mix of particulates,
chemicals and carcinogens produced by the processes of coal mining,
transportation and combustion. Who would choose to continue to support
such an industry?
The costs to Australia from the coal industry are clear enough in the
communities that live and work in proximity to coal mines and
coal-fired power stations. Respiratory diseases, intellectual
development delays in children, and lung cancer are all implicated.
Again, we lack the thorough studies to understand the full extent of
the harm being caused to Australia and Australians from this industry;
a human impost the NSW, Victorian, Queensland and WA governments
appear all to willing ignore in the face of lucrative royalties paid
to those governments from industry.
It is clear however that moving to cleaner, safer, healthier energy
sources would bring significant gains for public health in Australia.
This applies to the transport sector as well, where the air pollution
created by the use of fossil fuels is also causing considerable harm.
A (too) little known fact is that air pollution kills more people in
Australia each year than the road toll –
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/carbon-prices-health-bonanza-20120625-20y97.html#ixzz1z1qd5DgQ
No comments yet.
Antinuclear 
Leave a Reply