DIRTY ENERGY, BAD HEALTH

The general intent of NewEnergyNews is to report the good news about energy. But sometimes a story is just too important and too likely to get ignored by the mainstream press to turn away from. Perhaps the best way to think about what follows is that if we don’t do something about global climate change, your children and grandchildren could wind up living like this.

Interesting fact about solar energy: All over the world, governments and NGOs are getting photovoltaic panels where they can bring clean energy to places where dirty energy kills people.

Dirty energy threatens the health of 2 billion: study
Ben Hirschler, September 13, 2007 (Reuters via Yahoo News)

WHO
Paul Wilkinson, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

click to enlarge

WHAT
2 billion poor people worldwide suffer health problems due to lack of energy like electricity and cooking gas.

WHEN
Findings published September 13.

WHERE
Report published in the British medical journal Lancet

WHY
- The world’s entitled inhabitants use 20 times the energy per capita than those who go without.
- 2.4 billion exposed to open burning of solid fuels (wood, coal, dried dung) for cooking, heating and light suffer respiratory disease causing 1.6 million deaths/year and much more non-fatal respiratory disease, twice the levels of urban air pollution-induced respiratory disease and death.
- Ironically, the consumption of energy and spewing of greenhouse gases by the entitled is likely to lead to climate change, the burden of which will, once again, fall on the poor in the forms of drought, flood, fire, leading heat strokes, starvation and water-borne infectious diseases.
- The observations in the report reveal that the study of climate change has not elucidated the full impact it is likely to have.

Acute Lower Respiratory Infection (ALRI) in children under 5 around the world. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
- Wilkinson: "Paradoxically, the poor are using much less energy but they are getting all the adverse effects…We in the more developed countries have access to clean energy and are using much more of it and are contributing to the global problem of climate change, where the main adverse effects are likely to fall, once again, on lower-income countries."
- Richard Horton, Lancet editor: "[Current research on climate change] neglects a far larger set of issues focused on energy and health…"