The social costs of combustion

Lund University

Climate change is a much more serious and urgent challenge than commonly agreed among policymakers. The combined effect of the following three factors is important:

• Severe climate impacts across the world, including disappearing glaciers and sea ice, increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, the emergence of natural feed-back loops such as methane releases from tundra, as well as increasing rates of warming over particularly the Arctic region;

• The rapid rate of increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as well as the slow progress of both setting and meeting emission reduction targets;

• The increase in scientific understanding of key elements of the Earth system including the risk of subsystems reaching tipping points.

Fig 1. Percentage deaths by various causes. Respiratory diseases are primarily caused by air pollution and to some extent smoking. Source: WHO

From a political perspective, forging a global post-Kyoto treaty between 192 sovereign states is the ultimate collective action challenge. However there are key stumbling blocks. The Obama administration may not radically alter the United States (US) position on a post-2012 global climate policy. There are profound differences between the European Union (EU) and the US approaches to a post-2012 climate deal, such as political leadership vs. technological leadership, idealism vs. pragmatism and multilateralism vs. unilateralism. Furthermore, G-77/China demands more commitments from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries as a condition.

As a result of these concerns and perhaps counter intuitively, we argue for the urgency of a stronger focus on non-climate policies than currently exists. Profound changes to energy, transport and food systems, as well as changes to consumption patterns, will not come easily through policies only. Identifying and creating strong synergies between climate change mitigation and other social goals will increase the impetus for change towards a low-carbon society.

Sacrifices and incentives

Many climate change responses are perceived as costly and/or associated with sacrifices, such as increased fuel prices. Reframing these responses into beneficial terms, such as improved health and reduced social costs for healthcare, can be effective in gaining more public support. Climate policies based primarily on economic incentives run the risk of a rebound effect, counteracting the positive intentions of the policy. Up to half the emission reductions achieved through fuel efficiency in transport, buildings and industry may be lost due to corresponding increases in consumption of fossil fuel. Two examples of non-climate policies where environmental policy can be successfully coupled with other social goals are:

• Outdoor air pollution is a menace in all densely populated regions of the world, resulting in enormous human suffering and healthcare costs. Globally, one quarter of the population is exposed to unhealthy concentrations of air pollutants. Children are particularly at risk because of the immaturity of their respiratory organ systems. In the EU, air pollution is responsible for over 300,000 premature deaths and economic losses of over 80 billion euros every year. In China and India, the number of premature deaths exceeds one million annually. Air pollution is closely linked to combustion of fossil fuels, thus tackling air pollution will also mitigate climate change.

• According to the World Health Organization, indoor air pollution from cooking over open fires kills 1.6 million people annually (mostly women and children). It is often wrongly assumed that poor people’s emissions of greenhouse gases are negligible. Their emissions of fossil carbon are negligible but their emissions of carbon from wood energy are substantial. Wood fuel is renewable, but if consumption is greater than re-growth, it represents a net increase in emissions. Peasant farmers, of which there are one billion in the world, can play an important role in altering such emissions and thereby change from being passive victims to active participants in fighting global climate change.

Changes ahead

Minimising the risk of serious and dangerous climate change will necessitate much deeper cuts of emissions than previously calculated. This can only be achieved through radical technology and behavioural changes. Resignation because of the enormity of the task and the relative ineffectiveness of the individual is a serious hurdle. However, technologies that allow for individuals to take more active roles can promote both active participation and a mental transition from victims of climate policies to agents in fighting climate change.

For example, in industrialised regions, a rapid development away from internal combustion engines (ICE) to fully electrical cars will support a change from a central to a distributed production of electricity. The shift from ICE to electricity will also have a profound effect on improving health and habitability of cities in terms of air quality and noise. Also, in developing regions the promotion of efficient and smoke-free kitchens through more efficient stoves, creates a synergy of adaptation and mitigation resulting in a range of ancillary benefits, such as improved health, reduced time for fuel collection, better school attendance by children and reduced erosion.

Lars J Nilsson, Thomas B. Johansson
Karin Bäckstrand, Lennart Olsen
Lund University
W: www.lu.se/climate