Health Consequences of Extracting transporting and Burning “Natural” Gas. Part 3. More on why climate change is a health issue
The past few months have been a real roller coaster in the climate advocacy space. I had promised to write another article on the risks of extraction of natural gas but got caught up in other related projects that I will share with you today prior to returning to the topic of fracking and health next week.
I am writing this just after the US Senate passed the most ambitious piece of climate legislation to date. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 has provisions that are predicted to lower CO2 emissions by 40% by 2030 while lowering the energy costs for the average American. This bill now moves on to the House and hopefully to the President’s desk soon. While this is a big step in the right direction, we have to get to 100% elimination of fossil fuels as quickly as possible to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change. There is also a very valid concern that allowing for more leases for fossil fuel exploration and drilling on Federal Land will cause harm to front line communities and blunt the impacts of the good parts of the bill.
We will still have work to do even if this landmark bill passes the House and is signed by the President. Fortunately there are multiple opportunities to accelerate a just transition to clean energy that I will share with you throughout this series. For now I’d like to turn our attention back to “the why.” Why do we need to act on climate?
Last month my colleagues and I, at Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, released the Climate and Health Washington 2022 report,which gives a detailed account of the health risks we face at current levels of warming and the increased risks we face in the future. Spoiler alert: extreme heat events will be more frequent and deadlier, algal blooms more frequent, diseases transmitted by ticks and mosquitoes more prevalent, and our sea levels will continue to rise threatening our fisheries. Both flooding events and drought events will become more frequent and more severe. Our food supply is being threatened and low-income communities and communities of color who have been kept at the margins as our economy has grown are threatened the earliest and the most severely.
Now that we know this it becomes impossible to continue to sit on our hands and fail to act. We call on our fellow health professionals, our government leaders, and our business leaders to speak up, educate, and enact policies that accelerate the decarbonization of our economy. Now that Congress is moving forward the most effective complimentary steps that can be taken at a state, local and personal level is to stop using gas to heat and cook. There will be more to come on that later in this series.
Prior articles in this series:
1. General Overview of the Impacts of Extracting, Transporting and Burning Gas