Three Americans produce enough carbon emissions to kill one, study results | Greenhouse gas emissions
3 min read
Carbon emissions, according to the first analysis to calculate the cost of death, suggest that the lifestyles of about three average Americans will produce enough planetary heat emissions to kill one person, and that emissions from a coal-fired power plant will lead to more than 900 deaths.
New research creates the so-called “social cost of carbon”, a currency statistic placed on the damage caused by each ton of carbon dioxide emissions, by determining the expected death toll from emissions that cause the climate crisis.
For every 4,434 metric tons of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere beyond the 2020 emission rate, several public health studies are analyzed to conclude that one person worldwide will die prematurely from rising temperatures. This extra CO2 is equivalent to the current lifetime emissions of 3.5 Americans.
Research has found that adding 4m metric tons more than last year’s level produced by the average American coal plant would affect 904 lives worldwide by the end of this century. Eliminating global warming emissions by 2050 will save the expected 74 million lives worldwide this century.
Expected death figures from emission emissions are inaccurate and can be “broadly underestimated” as they cause only heat-related deaths rather than floods, storms, crop failures and other impacts from the weather. Daniel Presler of the Earth Institute at Columbia University says the crisis.
Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels directly kills people, a Milestone Harvard University study Released in February, more than 8 million people worldwide are dying from the health effects of toxic air.
“A significant number of lives could be saved if you pursue more aggressive climate policies than business under normal circumstances,” Fresler said. “I was amazed at how big the death toll was. There was some uncertainty about this, the number may be low, but it could be even higher.”
The study, published in Nature Communications, illustrates the wide range of emissions generated by population consumption in various countries around the world. The study found that while it would take just 3.5 Americans to create enough emissions in a lifetime to kill one person, it would take 25 Brazilians or 146 Nigerians to do so.
Since the invention of the Nobel Prize-winning economist William Nordas in the 1990s, the social, or financial cost of carbon has become a widely used metric. The measurement calculates the damage caused by one ton of emissions, which has the potential to adapt to changing climates.
Under Nordas’ Dice model The 2020 social cost of carbon is $ 37 per metric ton, but this figure brings the figure to 8 258 per tonne in addition to Presler’s death cost. This change of model is to drastically reduce emissions in order to achieve economically optimal policy Full decarbonization by 2050, A scene supported by climate scientists who can avoid the devastating effects of global warming.
“Nordas came up with a fantastic model, but he did not pick it up in the recent literature on the damage caused by climate change, and there has been an explosion of research on that topic in recent years,” Presler said.
Gernot Wagner, a New York University climate economist who is not involved in research, said that carbon’s social spending is an “important policy tool” but “very brief.”
“This is very important in our efforts to translate our climate impact into more relevant terms,” he said, adding that new research on the cost of mortality shows that “the results are certainly dramatic”.
Continuous heat waves have swept the world over the past month, Including dramatic heat and wildfires in the northwestern US PacificTemperature records in Seattle and Portland were shattered, and hundreds of people died of heat stroke and other related conditions. Scientists say Climate crisis, driven by carbon emissions, makes heat waves more frequent and severe.
When looking at emissions emitted by individual activities, Brusler said the focus should instead be on policies that affect businesses and governments that affect social and carbon pollution.
“My view is that people should not take their personal death emissions personally,” he said. “Our emissions are a function of the technology and culture of the place where we live.”
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