Air Pollution Kills Two Million People per Year

Climate change denier Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma sits on the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. In January he is likely to become the chair of that committee. So what does this mean? It means that when it comes to environmental protection, the most important person in the Senate is hostile toward the idea of keeping the Earth’s air clean.

A study conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina “estimates that around 2.1 million deaths are caused each year by human-caused increases in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) – tiny particles suspended in the air that can penetrate deep into the lungs, causing cancer and other respiratory disease.”

As we discuss in our book Enough of Us, even as industrialized countries around the world reach agreements on curbing fossil fuel use, world population continues to soar, especially in developing, or Third World, countries. And as these countries develop, they will be demanding more energy-hungry comforts, contraptions, and conveniences.

Just this week President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached a loosely constructed agreement on curbing climate change. Much of the agreement concerns cutting back the use of coal.

Inhofe is a conspiracy theorist. He believes that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the Hollywood elite, Al Gore, Michael Moore, and Democrat supporters MoveOn.org and George Soros.

Left out of most discussions of both environmental pollution and climate change is the amount of detrimental output from livestock, the production and feeding of which accounts for more pollutants than all transportation fuels—including road vehicles, boats, trains, and airplanes—combined.

Let’s say for the moment that Inhofe is right; that God would never allow humans to change his grand plan for the planet’s ecology. How about the UNC study that states that two million people a year die from just pollution? But that’s not all. The same study estimates that an additional almost-half-million deaths result from increases in ozone.

It makes sense that even if the preponderance of scientific evidence is wrong,  we should still be worrying about all the non-climate-change-related poison in the air.

And let’s say, for argument’s sake, that there is a 75 percent chance that the anti-climate change ninnies are correct. If one of them heard from his mechanic  that the family car had a 25 percent chance of having a disastrous mechanical breakdown on the highway, would he opt not to have a possibly life-saving repair done to the vehicle?

Humanity is approaching a precipice. As we do so we are increasing in number. It’s time to remove our blindfold and thin the herd by cutting back on our reproductive numbers. It’s not Inhofe and his ilk that will suffer the most, but their progeny will.