Untenable toll of air pollution
The writer is an academic and researcher. He is also the author of Development, Poverty, and Power in Pakistan, available from Routledge
Coal and other fossil fuel emissions have not only raised global temperatures to alarming levels, but these emissions are also responsible for poisoning the very air we breathe. The impact of rising air pollution around the world is nothing short of catastrophic.
New research reveals that over 8 million people die prematurely due to outdoor particulate matter produced from burning fossil fuels. Adding premature deaths attributed to indoor pollution (due to burning wood for fuel, for instance) to this number would cause the annual air pollution toll to exceed by another couple of million. To put these numbers in context, air pollution’s annual death toll is now higher than that from smoking.
David Wallace, the author of the book, The Uninhabitable Earth, warns that there could be 150 million excess premature deaths by the end of the century from air pollution if the world does not rise to the challenge of curbing this menace. Global warming itself has serious and varied implications. It is responsible for worsening floods and droughts, leading to crop failure, greater poverty, and the forced migration of people. But as devastating as these impacts of global warming may be, they don’t add up to anywhere near the mortality rates that air pollution is responsible for.
Respiratory illness rates are spiking due to air pollution, as are chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, even amongst non-smokers. Sustained air pollution also damages most major organs of the body, they cause heart and lung disease, diabetes, and dementia, and reduce intelligence, prevent learning, and halt productivity.
Economists at the World Bank have even placed a monetary value on the cost of air pollution. They estimate that as much as 6% of global GDP is being lost due to pollution and put the annual loss at $8.1 trillion. It is a shame that not even a fraction of this amount is being used instead to clean up the air.
The need to get clean air, clean water, and human health should have been placed at the heart of the current climate change discussions. Instead, these important issues were relegated to the sidelines as industry and governments clamored for attention at the COP 26 highlighting self-congratulatory efforts to decarbonise their production processes enough to keep accumulating wealth as usual. Addressing air pollution deserves more serious and urgent attention than merely trying to cap future emission levels.
The air people breathe in poorer and populous parts of the world is already untenable. In many Indian and Pakistani cities air pollution, vastly exceed the WHO air quality guidelines. While ‘smog’ has become the fifth season in cities like Delhi and Lahore, when air pollution is trapped due to winter temperature inversion, the air quality in these and surrounding cities during the rest of the year the situation is not good either. Industrial emissions, coal-powered energy projects, and vehicular emissions made worse due to the lack of effective vehicle fitness, use of adulterated and bad quality fuel are major factors that have made the air in poorer countries like ours untenable.
Air pollution is a surmountable problem, and it can be fixed with adequate resolve. In China, for example, particulate pollution has been cut by a third since 2013. In the 1990s, Mexico City’s pollution problem was as severe as it is now in Delhi or Lahore, but today this city’s air has improved significantly.
It is about time that the global community and national governments devise and implement effective strategies to address air pollution, especially in countries like Pakistan, which now has some of the most polluted cities in the world.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 10th, 2021.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.