Wednesday, 8 September 2021

Paying For More Air Pollution

Obviously, air pollution is caused by burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas). It is known that air pollution kills more people than malaria, HIV/AIDS and TB combined. In spite of this, in 2019 and 2020, world governments gave 20% more in overseas aid to fund fossil fuel extraction, than they were willing to allocate to programmes designed to cut air pollution (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/07/more-global-aid-goes-to-fossil-fuel-projects-than-tackling-dirty-air-study-pollution). What do politicians not understand? Could it be, that they are simply more concerned with profits, than they are about people's health? Or could it be that the people who die from air pollution concern them less, than the political donations from their friends? Either way, it shows they have no understanding of how to do a costs versus benefits analysis.

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