If you don’t think the world needs to spend $48 Trillion to get rid of CO2, then it has a Plan B for you: 16 other measures that could do the same thing for a fraction of the cost. Real air pollution has been very successfully reduced in cities like Pittsburgh, PA, but it wasn’t because CO2 was removed or that it followed some UN mandate. ⁃ TN Editor
The IPCC published their latest climate change report. They tried to justify spending $48 trillion over the next 20 years to transform world energy by claiming 180 million lives could be saved from reduced air pollution. Yes, there have been many studies that air pollution is one of the leading contributors to illness and death worldwide. Nextbigfuture agrees that particulates need to be removed to reduce the 6 million deaths per year from air pollution.
Direct programs that reduce the amount of particulate air pollution is 20 times cheaper than programs that also address carbon dioxide. Prioritizing the fastest and most cost-effective anti-soot and anti-particulate pollution would be decades faster and about 5% of the cost.
The 2013 plan set strict limits for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) at an estimated cost of US$38 billion. China’s new 2018-2020 anti-air pollution plan sets even stricter targets, requiring cities to achieve a decrease of a minimum of 18% in PM2.5 levels compared with a 2015 baseline in cities of prefectural or higher level, and where these targets have not yet been achieved. The new plan also goes much further in its scope than the 2013 action plan, which applied solely to the city clusters of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and the Pearl and Yangtze Deltas. The 2020 plan covers 82 cities throughout China (including Linfen in Shanxi) that will also need to initiate anti-smog measures.
According to the World Bank, the economic burden of pollution associated with premature mortality and morbidity—is immense for the world and for individual countries. Ambient particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution alone cost the global economy US$5.7 trillion, or 4.4 percent, of global GDP in 2016. Individual country studies, for Argentina, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, China, India, Lao PDR, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Peru and Zambia, at national and subnational levels, suggest that the costs of pollution related disease are mainly due to outdoor and household air pollution; lead exposure; noise pollution; and inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene.
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