As a scientist who studied Meteorology at MIT under the instruction of Professor Ed Lorenz, the discoverer of the “Butterfly Effect”, I am well aware of the planetary existential threat that climate change represents. My participation in UN Climate meetings since COP5 in 1999 has, however, also made me aware that we have made far too little progress in addressing this growing problem.
While much of the blame for climate inaction is, of course, due to misinformation spread by vested interests, climate activists have at the same time failed to sufficiently motivate the public into action. This is largely because climate change action is intrinsically difficult to motivate. As noted by the Nobel prize winning behavioral economist, Daniel Kahneman, climate is too “abstract, distant, invisible, and disputed” to create urgency.
In contrast, clean air has immediate, local, and much more tangible human health benefits. For example, I just published a “natural experiment” study of a coal coking plant closure outside Pittsburgh, PA. It documented an immediate 41% reduction in pediatric asthma emergency department visits in the communities surrounding the former plant, and their counts kept dropping in the following years, as the community healed.
Clean air action is also more politically feasible than climate change policies. I recently attended WHO’s 2nd Global Conference on Air Pollution and Health, which featured remarks from Gustavo Petro, the President of Colombia. He dismissed Colombia’s ability to take action against climate change because “the people of Colombia have little to do with climate change”. In sharp contrast, he went on to say that while “Colombia has one of the highest murder rates in the world, the air that we breathe kills more than violence in Colombia…poisoning our air costs lives in silence – this conference reinforces our determination to implement policies for both the environment and the health of our people.” So, while there is little political will to deal with climate change, the opposite is the case with dirty air, even though the major sources of air pollution and climate change CO2 are one and the same: fossil fuel combustion! In addition, unlike climate change, there are laws and regulations against air pollution, so promoting healthier air is a far more effective avenue for climate action than directly trying to convince people to take climate action for the climate’s sake.
And air pollution is but one of the public health pathways that have climate co-benefits, many with existing regulations and laws that can be implemented to also maximize their climate co-benefits. These avenues were outlined in our recent pre-COP 28 Workshop Report published in Environmental Epidemiology, also including government diet guidelines and food programs, as well as transportation and building construction guidelines. In short, if climate activists want to be more successful, they need to focus their support on public health policies, such as for clean air, that also have climate co-benefits, instead of the other way around.
An internationally recognized expert in air quality, epidemiology, and exposure assessment. He is a tenured member of the faculty of the departments of Medicine and Population Health at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, where he directs the graduate program in Human Exposure and Health Effects. In the last few decades, he has published widely regarding the human health benefits of clean air.