No matter your political affiliation or where you fall on accepting the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real and manmade, one attitude towards climate change we most likely have in common is that none of us want it to be happening. And, there’s a well-documented tendency for us to believe that climate impacts are far away and not hurting us here in the U.S. just yet, with only a third of us agreeing that climate change is hurting us already. This is wishful thinking, but perhaps, in the wake of Harvey and Irma, it’s getting harder to deny the truth. Climate change is here, as much as it is everywhere, and the impacts are urgent and getting worse.
The good news is that facing facts can be liberating, and conveniently, is usually Step 1 in making things better.
Cause and Effect
Humans are great problem-solvers, and to some extent, our current dilemma is a result of how we have solved our problems up until now, and our solutions’ unintended consequences. Take transportation: the problem was how to get ourselves and our stuff from Point A to Point B, preferably as easily as possible. Since the start of the industrial revolutions, we’ve done this by burning increasing amounts of fossil fuels.
Burning fossil fuels comes with benefits. Because of oil used for transportation, we can travel distances, ship products, build industries, move earth and materials more efficiently than our ancestors could have ever dreamed, all thanks to oil used for transportation.
And Side Effect
But our increased efficiency at transport comes at a cost. Burning gasoline - and diesel fuel (as we cover in our most recent, tongue-in-cheek video, above), produces plenty of toxic compounds that go into the air, which, as you may be aware, we breathe. Pollution from transportation fuel use has been estimated to cause more than 50,000 premature deaths nationally. Diesel in particular, creates a heavy burden of nitrous oxides and particulate matter, and is linked to asthma, heart disease, and cancer. These burdens are highest near roadways, and disproportionately strike low-income communities.
And More Side Effects
Transportation is also responsible for close to a third of our total contribution to the pollution causing global climate change (with diesel vehicles contributing 7% of the total). And the health impacts from that are wide-ranging. From increased morbidity and mortality during extreme weather events (like hurricanes and heat waves, droughts and floods) but also in the changes in spread of infectious disease, and allergens, and also in worsening air quality as heat increases.
Price of Progress?
So is burning fossil fuels for transportation worth the price tag, in terms of our health? Or can we come up with ways to solve our transportation problems that don’t sacrifice our economy, air quality or climate? I believe we can, and in increasing ways, already are.
We still have another month and a half of hurricane season to go. And the season after that. And through it all, we have to breathe. This is not a hide-under-your-covers moment - it is a roll-up-our-sleeves moment. Not just to clean up our collective mess, but to evaluate why the destructive potential of these storms has increased, and do what we can to decrease the destructive potential of all the climate impacts to human health and well-being.
Take action
In this video, we recommend making “no idling” a personal habit, and for those in Allegheny County, help stop school buses from idling, too! To find more actions and video, check us out at djst.tv.