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Fighting global warming to improve your health
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There is a new study just published in the “New England Journal of Medicine” that attempts to measure the health benefit from reducing air pollution on human longevity. The study authors found that 15% of the improvement in average lifespan from 74 years in 1979 to 77 years in 2000 was the result of decreased pollution.
In Pittsburgh, PA, a reduction from 30 micrograms of pollution to 20 micrograms of pollution per cubic meter of air resulted in an increase of 10 months of life expectancy. The study noted that even in cities with already clean air; the effect of reduced air pollution was still noticeable.
There is also a correlation between big polluters and emitters of carbon dioxide. The big contributors to air pollution are coal fired power plants, diesel trucks, ships and some industrial processes like steel making.
We can start to clean up these polluters. The U.S. Government has tightened restrictions on new coal fired power plants to the point where I doubt any new plants will be started. Existing plants under construction will be completed. This to me is a good start. Most coal fired plants emit a lot of pollution. They have that very tall smoke stack so the pollution is released up high where it can diluted (spread) over a large area and not kill the people who live close to the plant.
There are substitutes for coal which are all cleaner; nuclear, natural gas, wind and solar. Nuclear power is probably as cheap as coal if we could get a licensing protocol that would eliminate the huge legal bills required to build a new nuclear plant today. Natural gas combined with wind and solar power can provide 24 hour power like a coal plant. Solar in particular has an advantage over other electric sources in that it can be placed close to the consumer in most sunny areas of the country. You don’t have to run expensive transmission lines. Solar also produces power when it is likely the utility company is facing peak power load so it can replace some expensive stand-by power units.
Diesel trucks emit a lot of particulate pollution. They are a cause of respiratory problems like asthma and tend to concentrate in cities. We are close to having the technology to replace diesel trucks with natural gas or possibly a natural gas / electric hybrid technology that could dramatically reduce pollution from that source. Natural gas is plentiful in this country. The gas producers have developed the technology to extract gas from tight shale formations using horizontal drilling and fracturing techniques. We have a national pipeline system that can deliver natural gas to most of the country.
Cargo ships are a major source of pollution in many coastal areas. Ships burn about 10% of the world’s oil. These ships typically burn bunker oil, the cheapest and dirtiest oil for fuel. This oil is basically the waste that is left over after a refinery gets done extracting the gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel from crude oil. Ships are designed to use this dirty fuel because they expect that most of it is burned at sea where people won’t notice or complain.
The Port of Los Angeles has been working to get ships to connect to shore power so they won’t need to burn this dirty fuel in port to generate electricity. They are also using natural gas powered trucks to haul contains to and from these ships to cut down on pollution. My own idea is to start building nuclear powered container ships. We could make use to the technology developed over the years by our navy, which builds nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines. These ships would have the advantage of being able to travel faster than oil powered vessels which would mean they could carry more cargo than an oil powered vessel of the same size. Nuclear powered ships would have an economic advantage in shorter trip times which means they could charge more to carry the cargo.
Building nuclear powered cargo ships in this country would create a lot of high paying jobs. When the ships are constructed they would become an income producer that would support the debt used to pay for them. (I didn’t see much in the recent stimulus bill that would produce assets that would later pay for themselves. Too much of it was bigger government or counting mice in San Francisco.)
