NPR commentator ignores climate-disease links.
Clive Crook, commenting on NPR's Weekend Edition about the EPA's decision to regulate carbon dioxide, incorrectly asserted that there are no health consequences of carbon dioxide emissions for the U.S.
Talking with Scott Simon on Saturday's Weekend Edition about the EPA decision to regulate greenhouse gases because they pose a danger to the public's health and welfare, Financial Times columnist Clive Crook said "the announcement is a bit puzzling... to find health effects from CO2 is a little odd... For the US there's no obvious health impact from that [releasing CO2]."
True, carbon dioxide itself is not toxic. But greenhouse gas emissions are warming the climate, and this has a very direct effect on public health, and not just because of the physical disruptions that will ensue, e.g., heat waves (causing death), flooding (drowning), drought (dehydration) etc.
A growing scientific literature with widespread media coverage is indicating that climate change will expand the distribution of disease vectors for deadly human diseases, such as malaria and Dengue fever, allow pathogenic bacteria like Vibrio to move into regions that had been too cold for them, increase allergies by increasing the spread of allergens like ragweed pollen and re-release persistant organic pollutants that have been storied in glacial and Arctic/Antarctic ice back into atmospheric circulation.
The US is not immune to any of this. For example, a story featured on Environmental Health News this week looked at research showing that hotter temperatures and more intense dust storms are spreading Valley Fever across the US Southwest.
