The "Pandemic" That Kills 3 Times As Many As COVID-19

The Coronavirus worldwide pandemic is in the headlines all the time these days. And it should be, since it has killed over 2.8 million people.

But there is another killer that causes the deaths of three times as many people every year. It is air pollution, and it is caused mainly by our overuse and misuse of fossil fuels. Sadly, it is mostly ignored in the media.

We could eliminate most of those deaths by addressing global climate change -- by going to cleaner and renewable forms of energy, and going away from the use of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, too many of our politicians (and those in other countries) care more about corporate profits than they do about the lives of people. This must change!

The following is just part of an op-ed in The Guardian by their U.S. columnist Rebecca Solnit:

It is undeniably horrific that more than 2.8 million people have died of Covid-19 in the past 15 months. In roughly the same period, however, more than three times as many likely died of air pollution. This should disturb us for two reasons. One is the sheer number of air pollution deaths – 8.7 million a year, according to a recent study – and another is how invisible those deaths are, how accepted, how unquestioned. The coronavirus was a terrifying and novel threat, which made its dangers something much of the world rallied to try to limit. It was unacceptable – though by shades and degrees, many places came to accept it, by deciding to let the poor and marginalized take the brunt of sickness and death and displacement and to let medical workers get crushed by the workload.

We have learned to ignore other forms of death and destruction, by which I mean we have normalized them as a kind of moral background noise. This is, as much as anything, the obstacle to addressing chronic problems, from gender violence to climate change. What if we treated those 8.7 million annual deaths from air pollution as an emergency and a crisis – and recognized that respiratory impact from particulates is only a small part of the devastating impact of burning fossil fuels? For the pandemic we succeeded in immobilizing large populations, radically reducing air traffic, and changing the way many of us live, as well as releasing vast sums of money as aid to people financially devastated by the crisis. We could do that for climate change, and we must – but the first obstacle is the lack of a sense of urgency, the second making people understand that things could be different.

I have devoted much of my writing over the past 15 years to trying to foreground two normalized phenomena, violence against women and climate change. For all of us working to bring public attention to these crises, a major part of the problem is trying to get people engaged with something that is part of the status quo. We are designed to respond with alarm to something that just happened, that breaches norms, but not to things that have been going on for decades or centuries. The first task of most human rights and environmental movements is to make the invisible visible and to make what has long been accepted unacceptable. This has of course been done to some extent, with coal-burning power plants and with fracking in some places, but not with the overall causes of climate chaos. . . .

A lot of attention was paid to whatever actions might have caused Covid-19 to cross from animals to humans, but the actions that take fossil fuel out of the ground to produce that pollution that kills 8.7 million annually, along with acidifying oceans and climate chaos, should be considered far more outrageous a transgression against public health and safety.

My hope for a post-pandemic world is that the old excuses for doing nothing about climate – that it is impossible to change the status quo and too expensive to do so – have been stripped away. In response to the pandemic, we in the US have spent trillions of dollars and changed how we live and work. We need the will to do the same for the climate crisis. The Biden administration has taken some encouraging steps but more is needed, both here and internationally. With a drawdown on carbon emissions and a move toward cleaner power, we could have a world with more birdsong and views of mountains and fewer pollution deaths. But first we have to recognize both the problem and the possibilities.

After Years Of Getting Better, Air Pollution Is Getting Worse

A new study by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gives us some bad news. It shows fine particulate air pollution is getting worse. Between 2010 and 2016, this pollution had decreased, thanks to regulations put in place by the Obama administration.

But in 2017 and 2018, that air pollution got worse -- 5.5% worse in 2018 than it had been in 2016.

What is different in 2017 and 2018? A new Republican administration that has made it a point to put lobbyists in charge of the environment and deregulated what corporations must do to protect the environment. These Republicans seem to believe that we can have deregulated corporations and a clean environment. They are living in a dream world.

Corporations are not created to be good citizens and protect the environment. They have only one purpose -- to make as much money as possible. If a corporation can make a bigger profit by dumping more pollution in our air (and water), then that is what they are going to do.

How much longer will we put up with a Republican president and Congress members that don't care about the environment? How much dirtier do we want our air and water?

Donald Trump Is Lying - The U.S. Doesn't Have The Cleanest Air (And His Actions Are Making It Worse)

(Cartoon image is by Milt Priggee at miltpriggee.com.)

With Donald Trump, it's always believe what I say and ignore what I'm doing. That is especially true when it comes to the environment. While he is busy deregulating and eliminating rules for a cleaner environment, he tells the public that he's the "environmental" president, and that the United States has the cleanest air in the world.

Here's part of what Hilary Brueck has to say about this obvious Trump lie in Business Insider:

President Trump has once again falsely claimed that the US has the cleanest air in the world. 

"Who's got the world's cleanest and safest air and water? AMERICA!" Trump tweeted on Wednesday, as CNN kicked off a 7-hour-long session of "climate crisis" town halls with 10 Democratic presidential candidates. 

"I want crystal clean water and the cleanest and the purest air on the planet - we've now got that!" Trump added.

This isn't the first time that Trump has falsely touted America's air as number one — he tweeted a similar statement in October 2018, along with a map from a World Health Organization report. The statement was not true then, and it definitely isn't now. 

The Environmental Performance Index, a metric from environmental scientists at Yale and Columbia that ranks 180 countries around the world, puts the US in 10th place when it comes to overall air quality (Australia is first). 

In terms of PM 2.5 pollution — a measure of ultra-fine particulate matter in the air — the country with the world's cleanest air is New Zealand, while the US ranks seventh on that list. Meanwhile, the cleanest cities in the world (in terms of particulate concentrations) are in Sweden. . . .

Despite Trump's claims about the US' air quality, air in the country is actually getting dirtier and more dangerous to breathe under his administration. An Associated Press report in June analyzed federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data and found that "there were 15% more days with unhealthy air in America both last year and the year before" than there were during the period from 2013 to 2016. 

"There were noticeably more polluted air days each year in the president's first two years in office than any of the four years before," the AP said.

The American Lung Association's "State of the Air" report for 2019 found, similarly, that more than four in 10 Americans live in counties that got at least one "F" for unhealthy air. 

"That's 7 million more than last year's report," the report said. 

Air pollution is deadly — it kills tens of thousands of people in the US every year. Yet Trump has rolled back at least 10 air-pollution and emissions rules while he's been president, according to the New York Times.

General Public's Worry About Pollution Is Increasing

Donald Trump doesn't seem to be worried at all about the environment and keeping it clean for everyone. He has put an EPA-hater  in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency, and proposed cutting funding for the agency by around 25%.

This flies in the face of the general public's view on the environment and pollution. About 63% of the public say they worry a great deal about pollution of drinking water -- and 57% say they worry a great deal about the pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. Those are significant majorities.

In fact, those who worry a great deal has increased each of the last three years regarding all aspects of the environment -- 8 points for pollution of drinking water, 10 points for pollution of rivers & lakes & reservoirs, 9 points for air pollution, 13 points for global climate change, 11 points for loss of tropical rain forests, and 8 points for extinction of animals/plants.

Once again, Trump is following a policy that goes against the wishes of most Americans.

The chart above is from three years of questioning by the Gallup Poll -- the most recent being done between March 1st and 5th of a random national sample of 1,018 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

The King Of The Pollution Protecters

Rep. "Smokey Joe" Barton (R-Texas) earned his nickname. He never met a polluter that he didn't love, especially the ones that pour huge dollars into his campaign chest. And he's always been willing to fight for the right of those campaign donors to foul the air that Americans must breathe. We can always count on Smokey Joe to scream first and scream loudest anytime the EPA tries to make polluters clean up their act.

And its not just the air that Smokey Joe is willing to let polluters foul. When BP poured millions (billions?) of gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and President Obama pressured that oil company to set up a $20 billion account to pay for the damage they were causing through their negligent actions, Smokey Joe was horrified. How dare the president make that nice oil company pay for the damage they caused! Smokey Joe was so outraged that he offered a public apology to BP (which even embarrassed his Republican colleagues).

Now we learn that it's not just the air and open water that Smokey Joe is willing to let industry pollute. He is also perfectly willing to let corporate criminals pollute the water underground water that communities across the country depend on for their drinking water. Recent reports from the EPA and others have conclusively shown that the procedure known as "fracking" is contributing to the poisoning of underground water sources -- and once these sources are polluted with toxic chemicals, they cannot be cleaned up.

EPA Cracks Down On Pollution

The nation's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is finally taking some needed action to control the pollution that one state sends to another. The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule will affect power plants and similar polluters in 27 states that have been identified as polluting other states. It is estimated that the affected plants will have to spend about $800 million to come into compliance with the new law, but it is estimated that it will save the country around $280 billion in health benefits.

Some of the expected health benefits of the new EPA rule are (starting in 2014):
* Protect 240 million American from smog and soot pollution.
* Prevent up to 34,000 premature deaths.
* Prevent 15,000 non-fatal heart attacks.
* Prevent 19,000 cases of acute bronchitis.
* Prevent 400,000 cases of aggravated asthma.
* Prevent 1.8 million sick days a year.

The fact that all of the above is preventable but has not been accomplished to date because of corporate greed and governmental foot-dragging is inexcusable. How can anyone justify putting corporate profits above the health of American citizens? Are the deaths and medical problems of hundreds of thousands of Americans just to be considered "collateral damage" in the drive for ever-fatter corporate bank accounts?

The new rule, which will go into effect on January 1st, will save between 670 and 1,700 premature deaths in Texas alone each year. But that has not prevented the Republican leadership in Texas from condemning the new rule. Governor Rick Perry said it "is another example of heavy-handed and misguided action from Washington, D.C., that threatens Texas jobs and families and puts at risk the reliable and affordable electricity our state needs to succeed." Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) joined the governor in expressing that sentiment.

Frankly, that attitude, though expected from Texas Republicans (who sold out to corporate interests years ago), is utterly ridiculous. These polluting plants should have been forced to clean up their act many years ago. They should never have had the right to put the health of Americans (in any state) in danger so they could save a few corporate dollars.

In fact, the state leadership in Texas are the last people who should be complaining. Texas has long led the nation in the amount of pollution it produces. There are only six countries in the entire world that produce more pollution than the state of Texas (and one of those countries is the United States).

This is a very good rule that is long overdue. I agree with regional EPA director Al Armendariz who said, "I think this is one of the most important rules the agency has ever published."

We can now expect the House (and Senate) Republicans to do everything in their power to overturn this new rule. Their recent actions (favoring corporate tax cuts while slashing programs that help ordinary people) have shown that they care a lot more about corporate bigwigs than the health and/or financial security of regular American citizens. We'll just have to hope the Democrats and the president have enough backbone to stand up for the new rule.

Republicans Hate Clean Air And Water

It has become obvious in the last few weeks to anyone with half a brain that the Republicans in Congress have abandoned ordinary Americans to insure that the rich and the corporations can continue hogging the wealth and income of this country. While giving massive tax breaks to the rich and protecting enormous subsidies for corporations, these Republicans have proposed cuts to programs that help ordinary Americans -- the poor, the elderly, the children, the sick and disabled, the unemployed, and even the struggling middle class.

They have made a decision that corporate profits and fat bank accounts for the richest Americans are far more important than government programs that help ordinary Americans in need. But this is not the only area in which the Republicans have ignored the well-being of most Americans to protect their rich buddies. They also oppose any efforts to make corporations and other businesses stop polluting the environment and poisoning the air and water. They choose to fatten corporate profits instead of protecting the health and safety of American citizens.

It is bad enough that they have fought any efforts to stop global climate change, which is already beginning to have serious effects worldwide. But these Republicans want to go even further. They want to destroy the very organization created to protect the environment and assure that all Americans have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink -- the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Republicans have fought the efforts of the EPA to protect ordinary Americans for many years. During the Bush administration, they cut funding for the agency and restricted the reach of its function (like refusing to allow it to make rules regarding greenhouse gases). Now they want to go even further.

We are now starting to see just how far they will go to protect corporations while throwing ordinary American under the bus. Recently, Republican presidential candidate came out in favor of completely abolishing the EPA, and several members of the House Republican caucus have voiced their support for this idea.

Some of you might find it hard to believe most congressional Republicans would support such a radical idea. But all you have to do is look at a vote taken in the House yesterday. At least 250 House members (almost exclusively Republicans) passed an amendment to the government funding bill that would ban the EPA from regulating toxic air emissions of industry.

Let me make that clear. They voted to ban the EPA from performing one of its most important functions -- one of the reasons it was founded -- to regulate toxic emissions and assure that Americans have clean air to breathe. And the reason they did that was to protect corporate profits, to keep these businesses from having to clean up the poisons they are dumping into the air we all must breathe.

The EPA is the last line of defense in the battle for clean air and water. States cannot be counted on to perform this vital function. Take my own state of Texas for instance. Republican leadership in that state has allowed it to be the largest polluter of any state in the Union. In fact, only six countries in the world produce more air pollution than Texas does, and oil & natural gas production is poisoning much of the state's groundwater.

It is only the EPA, not state agencies, that is demanding the state clean up its act. Without the EPA, Texas would foul not only its own air and water (it has placed a radioactive waste dump over an aquifer that feeds 8 states), but also that of many other states.

Republicans are using the excuse of cutting the budget to justify this unwarranted and inexcusable attack on the EPA. But as we have already seen, this is not true. If they truly wanted to cut the deficit, they would not be giving massive tax breaks to the rich and subsidies to the corporations, and they would be slashing the bloated budget of the Defense Department. Since they aren't, it becomes obvious they are attacking the EPA just to fatten corporate coffers.

But they are not fooling the American public. While a large majority of Americans want the deficit to be reduced, they don't want it done at the expense of hurting the EPA's ability to mandate clean air and water. This is shown in a survey done for the American Lung Association, which was conducted February 7th through 14th. Note the following from the survey:

ARE YOU CONSERVATIVE, MODERATE, OR LIBERAL?
liberal...............18%
moderate...............37%
conservative...............41%
don't know/refused...............3%

DO YOU THINK CONGRESS SHOULD STOP THE EPA FROM UPDATING AIR POLLUTION STANDARDS?
no...............68%
yes...............28%
don't know...............4%

DO YOU THINK CONGRESS SHOULD STOP THE EPA FROM UPDATING CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSION STANDARDS?
no...............64%
yes...............30%
don't know...............5%

SHOULD THE EPA IMPOSE STRICTER LIMITS ON THE AMOUNT OF MERCURY THAT POWER PLANTS AND INDUSTRIAL FACILITIES CAN RELEASE?
yes...............79%
no...............18%
don't know...............3%

SHOULD THE EPA IMPOSE STRICTER LIMITS ON THE AMOUNT OF SMOG THAT POWER PLANTS, OIL REFINERIES, AND OTHER INDUSTRIES CAN RELEASE?
yes...............77%
no...............21%
don't know...............2%

Cutting funds for the EPA, or abolishing it (which is what the Republicans really want), might help corporate America to increase their already record-breaking profits, but it will seriously damage the health of most Americans by poisoning the air and the water. The people know this, and so does the Congress. The only logical conclusion is that the Republicans just don't care about clean air and water.