Pollution and the role of solar energy

The death toll from global warming continues to mount as western wildfires, droughts, and other climate-related events continue to dominate the news. Clearly, climate scientists’ warnings about dire consequences from unmitigated fossil fuel burning, have gone unheeded. Deadly weather events are only the most obvious effects of global warming. We now are in dire need of investments to control deadly pollutants like smog and soot. We could cut worldwide deaths from air pollution in half in a few decades and end the growth of global warming emissions in just a few years, international experts declared on Monday.

Study links pollution and solar 

With a 7 percent increase in energy-related investment, the world could cut air-pollution mortality from about 6.5 million today to 3.3 million in 2040. These changes would bring about a peak in CO2 emissions by 2020. Along with spending on pollution control equipment, the keys, it said, are energy efficiency and the use of renewable sources of energy like wind and solar.
The report marks a new movement for those who favor the long-term goal of fighting global warming toward an equal and more immediate concern—protecting the health of the world.
"Clean air is a basic human right that most of the world's population lacks," said Fatih Birol, IEA's executive director in a statement. "No country—rich or poor—can claim that the task of tackling air pollution is complete."

Developing countries need renewable energy

The damaging effects of pollution are greatest in developing countries in Asia where there is a high reliance on coal for power generation and in sub-Saharan Africa, where inefficient burning of biomass accounts for more than 50 percent of its air pollution. Eighty percent of the global population living in cities that monitor pollution levels are breathing air deemed to be unhealthy by the World Health Organization.

Americans breathing polluted air too!

More than half of all Americans still breathe polluted air due to high ozone and particulate matter, according to a report published earlier this year by the American Lung Association.
Another study states that the life expectancy of people living in London is cut short by approximately 16 months due to elevated levels of nitrogen oxide. The IEA assessment outlines a Clean Air Scenario where an additional $4.8 trillion in pollution control technologies, renewable energy, and energy efficiency measures is invested globally between now and 2040. The investment would include making clean cooking facilities available to an additional 1.8 billion people worldwide.

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