Probably true, though coal mining also creates methane emissions.
Nesrie
5558
This apparently is Berkley that’s banning it in low rise buildings. It just made me wonder if considering natural gas as a plus might not be… a good idea. I kind of assumed natural gas was not at the top of the list of things not to use.
Clay
5561
We order our toilet paper and paper towels from Who Gives a Crap.
Costco’s TP isn’t even nice compared to the likes of Charmin. Anybody use the seventh generation stuff? They got an ‘A’.
Charmin is awful with all the powdery remains on it.
MikeJ
5564
It’s crazy how bad air pollution is. These effects seem really strong…
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/07/air-pollution-kills.html
We find that counties with increasing shares of cheating diesel cars experienced large increases both in air pollution and in the share of infants born with poor birth outcomes. We show that for each additional cheating diesel car per 1,000 cars—approximately equivalent to a 10 percent cheating-induced increase in car exhaust—there is a 2.0 percent increase in air quality indices for fine particulate matter (PM2:5) and a 1.9 percent increase in the rate of low birth weight. We find similar effects on larger particulates (PM10; 2.2 percent) and ozone (1.3 percent), as well as reductions in average birth weight (-6.2 grams) and gestation length (-0.016 weeks). Effects are observed across the entire socio-economic spectrum, and are particularly pronounced among advantaged groups, such as non-Hispanic white mothers with a college degree. Effects on pollution and health outcomes are approximately linear and not affected by baseline pollution levels. Overall, we estimate that the 607,781 cheating diesel cars sold from 2008 to 2015 led to an additional 38,611 infants born with low birth weight. Finally, we also find an 8.0 percent increase in asthma emergency department (ED) visits among young children for each additional cheating diesel car per 1,000 cars in a subsample of five states.
It would be interesting to guess how many life-years were stolen by VW from this one cheat…
Edit:
Globally, the AQLI reveals that particulate pollution reduces average life expectancy by 1.8 years, making it the greatest global threat to human health. By comparison, first-hand cigarette smoke leads to a reduction in global average life expectancy of about 1.6 years. Other risks to human health have even smaller effects: alcohol and drugs reduce life expectancy by 11 months; unsafe water and sanitation take off 7 months; and HIV/AIDS, 4 months. Conflict and terrorism take off 22 days. So, the impact of particulate pollution on life expectancy is comparable to that of smoking, twice that of alcohol and drug use, three times that of unsafe water, five times that of HIV/AIDS, and more than 25 times that of conflict and terrorism.
On the plus side, this might mean something gets done about it.
From the department of not all governments in the US are totally fucking useless
Oghier
5568
Well, if they can make those targets there…
MikeJ
5569
Well, that was the effect of the VW fiasco by itself, so I guess something was done about it. It’s scary because of the implication about all the other sources of air pollution, where the effects are harder to disentangle.
Has much been done about it in the US, other than punishing VW? Maybe I’ve missed it, but I’m not aware that cities are banning diesels* or creating ULEZs in the way they are in Europe.
- Older ones anyway. When you look into the details, relatively few cities are planning to ban Euro6 cars.
That is depressingly close to not being satire.
Nesrie
5573
Nah, they’d call it an act of God, and then try to round up the “right” people to blame instead of just trying to act more responsibly and treat our planet like it’s our only planet to live on.
Earlier this month Opec declared Thunberg, and with her the other young climate activists, the “greatest threat” to the fossil fuel industry. Thunberg tweeted them her thanks. “Our biggest compliment yet.”
Amen. Like most older people I am contaminated by mundane responsibilities. I drive regularly because I need to (or perceive I need to); I don’t spend all day protesting because I have work to do, a kid to raise, groceries to purchase, message boards to kvetch on.
I can imagine the clarity of a young person becoming fully aware of the world around them and seeing that we are killing our planet and nobody seems to care about it a hundredth as much as it deserves.
Clay
5575
I’m happy to see they can be classy in France, too!
