Many delegates here at the Paris climate conference must have leapt with joy when actor and former Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger published a Facebook post this week that went viral, titled “I don’t give a **** if we agree about climate change.”
The politicians and bureaucrats meeting here – now in extra time – must speak in measured language, seldom saying what they really think. Former politicians, on the other hand, get a lot more leeway.
And Schwarzenegger wants you to know that he doesn’t care if you think he is right about climate change. He’s not interested in debating the science or the response to global warming.
On one level, I understand his sentiment. Since my first book, I’ve acknowledged the reality of man-made climate change, and asked what the best policy response is. It is very difficult to engage with people who do not acknowledge (or are not interested in hearing) what scientists or economists clearly tell us.
But that makes it even more important that those of us talking about global warming and its policy responses are responsible about statistics and data. It’s not good enough to swagger around saying, “I think I’m right and I’m going to ignore the haters.” Schwarzenegger loses me when he declares, “every day, 19,000 people die from pollution from fossil fuels. Do you accept those deaths?”
It’s emotive, but it’s wrong to say that 19,000 people are killed by fossil fuels every day. About 11,000 of these people are killed by burning renewable energy – wood and cow dung mainly – inside their own homes. The actual number of people killed by fossil fuels each day is about 3,900.
Here’s what the data shows: the World Health Organization finds of the 7 million annual air pollution deaths, the majority come from indoor air pollution, and about 85% are caused by renewables/biomass burning.
Moreover, a large part of outdoor air pollution stems from non-fossil fuels. The most recent Global Burden of Disease estimates that 12% of all outdoor air pollution comes from indoor air pollution, causing an extra 373,000 premature deaths. The newest study from Nature estimates that indoor air pollution alone from households in China and India spilling into outdoor air pollution causes 760,000 outdoor air pollution deaths.
The Nature study shows that 600,000 outdoor air pollution deaths are caused by natural sources (mostly airborne desert dust). Another 660,000 deaths are caused by agriculture, mostly from release of ammonia, forming ammonium sulphate and nitrate.
Finally, nearly 200,000 additional deaths come from large biomass burning (forest burning like what we have recently seen in Indonesia).
Power generation, traffic and industry – mostly fossil-fuel driven – in total cause 854,000 air pollution deaths. Added to the 560,000 deaths from indoor air pollution caused by coal, this means about 3,900 deaths each day.
Air pollution is the biggest environmental killer on the planet. And if we glibly blame this on climate change in order to win a Facebook argument, we are going to look in the wrong direction for solutions. Fixing air pollution is firstly a question of poverty (most indoor air pollution) and lack of technology (factories) – not about global warming and CO₂.
In his Facebook post, Schwarzenegger suggests that we are faced with “two completely sealed rooms”: one has a gasoline car and one has an electric one. We are (for an unknown reason, but let’s stick with it) to go into the sealed room and breathe in the car’s fumes for an hour. Which do we pick?
But choosing a car is a first world problem. For 2.8 billion people, the real challenge is a lack of access to modern energy. So, here’s a choice for Schwarzenegger: you’re faced with two completely sealed kitchens. Behind door number 1 is a modern kitchen, powered by electricity generated with fossil fuels. It is clean and dependable. Behind door number two is a kitchen where cooking and heating is generated by renewables like wood and dung, filled with a thick smoke that according to WHO is typically ten-times the pollution of outdoor Bangkok, or the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.
Kitchen in Burma (photo: clsheen Foap)
While Schwarzenegger chooses which kitchen he would go into, the world has already made its mind up. The biggest UN global survey about policy choices, with nearly 10 million responses, shows that people want simple things like food, better healthcare, and education. The very last priority, number 16 of 16, is “action taken on climate change.”
To fix climate change, we need a future that’s based on affordable green energy for everyone. That’s why for more than a decade, I’ve called for massive investment in R&D into green energy technology. The Gates-led innovation fund announced here in Paris is the kind of game changer that’s needed. Much more support and funding is required.
The only way to achieve that will be for all of us talking about climate change focus on the facts. There is a compelling case to invest much more in green energy research. Declaring that we are above debate and using statistics that don’t stack up is just delivering a middle finger to the rest of the planet.
