It is very clear that fossil fuels, which we burn for power and transportation, are killing us. This includes oil, coal, and natural gas. Both with production and combustion, all fossil fuels create air pollution and greenhouse gases. But oil, coal, and methane gas are in the “energy” part of the budget, vehicles and highways are in the “transportation” part of the budget, and treatment for health problems are in the “health” budget. It’s like they’re each a different silo standing all by itself, each with its own funding, and we don’t think of them as interacting or affecting the others.
Air pollution has major effects on our health and well-being:
– It contributes to 1 in 8 cardiac events and 1 in 12 cardiac deaths worldwide.
– It causes lung disease including asthma and emphysema, and exacerbations of both.
– It causes lung cancer and other cancers, strokes, dementia, cognitive problems, diabetes, premature birth, low birth weight, and is linked to kidney disease, obesity, and high blood pressure.
– It affects school and job performance.
Due to our country’s environmental racism, all of these health problems are more pronounced in communities of color, because our country has placed highways, refineries, and other industrial facilities in or near communities of color.
Greenhouse gases contribute to climate change. In the Southeast, this is already affecting us – floods, major hurricanes, wildfires, and changing temperatures. As the world’s temperature increases, we will be seeing more of these, more heatwaves, more air pollution, changing habitat for mosquitos and ticks and the diseases they spread.
By producing and burning fossil fuels, we are truly killing ourselves. It’s like we decided to force everyone to smoke cigarettes, without asking their permission.
And yet, we are stuck. Our local, state and national budgets are divided by area, which puts them into silos that don’t overlap: energy, health, education, transportation.
A major health problem is happening now. We know what we need to do to fix both air pollution and climate change, but the money is not in the “health” budget, it’s in the “energy” budget. We spend billions treating heart attacks in hospitals, major foundations will fund clinic visits, blood pressure checks, smoking cessation and diabetes treatments, but we won’t spend “health” dollars to pay for solar panels or electric school buses. And we don’t consider “energy” dollars as “healthcare.”
We need to be creative with how we think about health care. We spend $20-$50 billion per year on fossil fuel subsidies. If we took 1/10 of that, we would have $2-$5 billion which could help clinics, hospitals and schools with energy conservation, solar, wind or geothermal energy, clean transportation (EV school and transit buses, trucks, cars), and the charging infrastructure needed for electric vehicles. Foundations could prevent heart attacks and strokes by funding clean energy at clinics and offices, just like they fund vaccines to prevent deaths from measles, influenza, and other infectious diseases.
Our health is interconnected with our climate and the air we breathe, and our thinking about funding solutions that improve health should reflect that. We don’t need silos, we need to look at the big picture and how energy and transportation and health intersect and affect each other, so we can be healthy and thrive.
11/11/2020
