Health Benefits of Climate Policy

Laser Talk

This page was updated on 05/13/18 19:53 CDT.

Question:  How does reducing fossil fuel use benefit health?

Answer: Climate change and fossil fuel air pollution are intimately linked. Burning fossil fuels harms our health directly by generating pollutants, and indirectly through release of greenhouse gases. Both the direct and indirect costs are often paid for by taxpayers. Cutting back on fossil fuels improves public health in a couple different ways.

Cutting fossil fuel use reduces air pollutants that impact our health. The greatest benefit comes from cutting back on coal, which even under stringent pollution rules still emits lung-damaging fine particulates, sulfur gases, and nitrogen oxides (NOx)[1,2] as well as mercury, a neurotoxin. [3] Motor fuels also emit particulates, smog-promoting hydrocarbons, and NOx. Natural gas burns cleaner – no particulates, sulfur, or mercury – but still emits NOx. [4]

Reducing fossil fuel use also reduces greenhouse gases. Although CO₂ is not inherently toxic, it is the major cause of climate change, which has its own slate of public health impacts. These include heat stress, more powerful storms, extremes of drought and flooding, spread of infectious disease, and even nutritional deficiency. That’s why the EPA found in 2009 that CO₂ from burning fossil fuels is dangerous to human health. The impacts of climate change have been acknowledged as the major public health challenge of the century. [5] All fossil fuels contribute to global warming if we discharge their emissions into the atmosphere.

Air pollution can be reduced with various kinds of scrubbers and catalysts on smokestacks and tailpipes, [6] but most of those treatments don’t mitigate climate change. Curtailing the use of fossil fuels can benefit our health by reducing both air pollution and the worldwide effects of climate change.