Lancet series finds that cutting greenhouse pollutants will have major direct health benefits worldwide

Green Car Congress covers a major statement about the tremendous ancillary benefits of cutting emissions: Tackling climate change by reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions will have major direct health benefits in addition to reducing the risk of climate change, especially in low-income countries, according to a series of six papers on “Health and Climate Change” published 25 November in the British medical journal The Lancet.

The studies use case studies to demonstrate the co-benefits of tackling climate change in four sectors: electricity generation, household energy use, transportation, and food and agriculture.

“Policymakers need to know that if they exert their efforts in certain directions, they can obtain important public health benefits as well as climate benefits. Climate change threatens us all, but its impact will likely be greatest on the poorest communities in every country. Thus, it has been called the most regressive tax in human history. Carefully choosing how we reduce greenhouse gas emissions will have the added benefit of reducing global health inequities.,” [said] Kirk R. Smith, professor of global environmental health at UC Berkeley and principal investigator in the United States for the overall research effort.

Each study in the series examines the health implications in both high- and low-income countries of actions designed to reduce the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases. Climate change due to emission of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel energy sources causes air pollution by increasing ground-level ozone and concentrations of fine particulate matter.

The studies were commissioned by the NIEHS, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in part to help inform discussions next month at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen. The NIEHS is one of the key sponsors of the international event….

A box of lancets, shot by BrokenSphere, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2