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>The 12,000 people dying per year from pollution in California costs the health system billions Even if that number were true, does the "billions" come from a

by afafsd 12y ago

>The 12,000 people dying per year from pollution in California costs the health system billions Even if that number were true, does the "billions" come from a proper study which takes into account the fact that they'll inevitably die of something else anyway? Also, air pollution from burning fossil fuels has been drastically reduced over the past few decades and will continue to be reduced as technology improves. >There are no technical, or financial reasons why this can't be done. It just comes down to competence and corruption One point one trillion dollars, in the presumably-optimistic case proposed. That's $30,000 for every man, woman and child in California.

illumen 12y ago
From the abstract of the PDF we are reading... right at the top: "avoid $103 (31-232) billion/yr in health costs" 103 * 10 years == $1 trillion As you can see from the first paragraph in the article, the saved health care costs would cover it. "World Health Organization: Air pollution kills 7 million people a year" "Air pollution is behind nearly 200,000 early deaths every year in the United States, according to a new study by researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology." "California, they found, topped the charts with an estimated 21,000 early deaths every year due to air pollution, largely as a result of road transportation and commercial and resident emissions." The article does NOT take into account recent advances like solar thermal in Australia (base load cost close to coal), and car batteries in Denmark (1000s of cars used to store power in the grid). It also doesn't include biofuels like are used in Germany for more than wind+solar currently.
- VLM 12y ago
  I think whats being missed is 7 million people are not going to become eternal, they're going to die anyway at a higher cost (medical costs only go up, for multiple generations much faster than inflation, so an identical death in 2004 and 2014 will by definition cost more in 2014) Its a good idea. There's no point in causing unneeded pollution. Not to mention pollution doesn't instantly magically cause death among a very small segment of humanity, it ruins quality of life for pretty much everyone which as a side effect culls off the 1% with the worst lung function or whatever. Where it goes off the rails is there's a business model around extracting all the net worth from 99% level individuals before they die, to eliminate inherited wealth from the middle and lower upper classes. Having them die from something else, a little later, a little more expensively, isn't going to magically make that business model go away.

by afafsd 12y ago

illumen 12y ago

From the abstract of the PDF we are reading... right at the top: "avoid $103 (31-232) billion/yr in health costs" 103 * 10 years == $1 trillion As you can see from the first paragraph in the article, the saved health care costs would cover it. "World Health Organization: Air pollution kills 7 million people a year" "Air pollution is behind nearly 200,000 early deaths every year in the United States, according to a new study by researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology." "California, they found, topped the charts with an estimated 21,000 early deaths every year due to air pollution, largely as a result of road transportation and commercial and resident emissions." The article does NOT take into account recent advances like solar thermal in Australia (base load cost close to coal), and car batteries in Denmark (1000s of cars used to store power in the grid). It also doesn't include biofuels like are used in Germany for more than wind+solar currently.

VLM 12y ago
I think whats being missed is 7 million people are not going to become eternal, they're going to die anyway at a higher cost (medical costs only go up, for multiple generations much faster than inflation, so an identical death in 2004 and 2014 will by definition cost more in 2014) Its a good idea. There's no point in causing unneeded pollution. Not to mention pollution doesn't instantly magically cause death among a very small segment of humanity, it ruins quality of life for pretty much everyone which as a side effect culls off the 1% with the worst lung function or whatever. Where it goes off the rails is there's a business model around extracting all the net worth from 99% level individuals before they die, to eliminate inherited wealth from the middle and lower upper classes. Having them die from something else, a little later, a little more expensively, isn't going to magically make that business model go away.