Put a Price on Carbon Pollution; It’s Good for our Health!
Originally published in the Sudbury Star on May 15, 2021, as "A price on pollution is good for our health." https://www.thesudburystar.com/opinion/columnists/blacklock-a-price-on-pollution-is-good-for-our-health
It turns out the current COVID-19 lockdown has a rare silver lining. With nothing much else to do, I’ve embarked on some spring cleaning. Like most people, I’ve accumulated way too much stuff, so I’ve been dumping miscellaneous items at the curbside, hoping they will disappear. (It’s amazing what people will haul away.) I hired my daughter to sell redundant clothes on-line. And though I hate throwing stuff out, the stuffed garbage bags have piled up in my already overstuffed garage.
These days, the City of Greater Sudbury only takes two bags every second week. So I ask Siri where extra garbage tags are sold. I drive to Shoppers and fork out the $2-per-tag user fee. The whole process is intentionally annoying and visible. It’s a nudge towards the three Rs: Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. It reminds me that consumption has consequences. The planet doesn’t dispose of my garbage-pollution for free. There’s a cost. A price we’ve been ignoring for too long.
In days gone by, we humans made our messes, and expected the planet to mop them up. But we’ve multiplied to almost 8 billion people, and the Earth can no longer absorb our impact. Collectively, we’re rapidly wrecking the place, crossing one planetary boundary after another. We’re even managing to change the climate. Things have reached the point where it can no longer be “free” to spew greenhouse gases, poisons, plastics, and waste of every conceivable sort into our air, water, and soil. Pricing pollution is an idea whose time has come.
Truthfully, it never was free to pollute. It’s cost us dearly. The impact on human health alone has been enormous. There’s hardly an ecosystem left on Earth that isn’t contaminated with plastics and poisonous chemicals. Air pollution kills millions of people every year. And because the atmosphere has no boundaries, air pollutants don’t stay put. Some days, a significant proportion of the nastiness in California’s air is from China!
Greenhouse gases, however, are the consummate global pollutants. Whether they’re produced by a factory in Pittsburgh, a hospital in Saudi Arabia, a fire in the Amazon, or by my neighbour driving his SUV to work, they affect everyone everywhere, and will continue to do so, centuries after they reach the atmosphere. It’s going to get harder and harder for humans to stay healthy on a planet with a treacherous and unpredictable climate.
Which brings me to a short paper I found recently in the British medical journal The Lancet, called “Health benefits of a carbon tax.” [883] We Canadians have a nicer name for such taxes: greenhouse gas pollution pricing.
A visible and rising price on pollution is a firm nudge. It helps us reckon with the true costs of burning fossil fuels on a finite planet. As coal, oil, and gas become less economical sources of energy, individuals and corporations will reconsider their options. And that could have huge and immediate benefits for our health. The air in our cities will be cleaner. We will rethink our dietary habits, our modes of transportation, and our consumer behaviours. Human energy might even become a “thing” again, as we rediscover our bicycles and our own two feet as modes of transportation. Chances are, we’ll all get more exercise. Our weights, our blood sugars, our blood pressures, and our health care costs will go down.
And here’s the best thing: each spring, we can look at our income tax statements, and see our rebate on the extra money we forked out to pay for our pollution. (not visible enough, Justin)
Finally, since I’m a doctor, I’ll leave you with one last health tip: spring cleaning is an excellent form of exercise. It’s great for your physical (and mental) health, even if it does generate garbage. I racked up over 19,000 steps in a single day!
Sources:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935121000487
Haines A et al. The Imperative for Climate Action to Protect Health. NEJM 2019; 380;3:263-73.
Frumkin H and Haines A. Global Environmental Change and Noncommunicable Disease Risk. Annu. Rev. of Public Health 2019, 40:261-82