Why carbon pricing is good for your health

By Trevor Hancock, U of Victoria, School of Public Health (retired)
Victoria Times Colonist
September 29, 2024
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: Canada

It is very clear that pollution causes harm… Broadly speaking, direct human costs are measured in the value of lives lost, the cost of treating pollution-related illness and the lost production due to sickness-related work absence. For example, a 2021 Health Canada report on the health impact attributable to air pollution in Canada — mostly arising from the combustion of fossil fuels — noted that in 2016 there were 15,300 premature deaths, 8,100 emergency-room visits, 2.7 million asthma symptom days and 35 million acute respiratory symptom days per year. The total economic cost of these health impacts in 2016 due to medical costs, reduced workplace productivity, pain and suffering was about $120 billion, or roughly six per cent of GDP… So carbon pricing is really a health measure.

Read More