Breakthrough: In Praise of Petroleum?

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In a previous post, Roger makes an eloquent case that focusing exclusively on emissions reduction may be catastrophic for public health. He argues that malaria eradication in Africa would be associated with a modest increase in CO2. An exclusive focus on emissions reduction would deny this benefit. He makes the case that energy modernization is the key to sustainable development.

Perhaps the most compelling example for modernization involves cooking. In 2002, Dr. Kirk Smith described the situation clearly on the editorial pages of Science magazine. Over 2 billion people rely on local biomass for cooking. While there are conditions where local biomass can be relatively clean, sustainable and healthy, often this is not the case. Mining biomass will often result in a net increase in carbon emissions. In addition, biomass utilization for cooking is a major source of non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane and black carbon. Most importantly, biomass combustion can have enormous health impacts. Exposure to particulates from cooking is estimated by many to be the most significant environmental factor influencing health after access to clean water and basic sanitation. Further, women and children are disproportionately impacted because women are almost exclusively cooking and caring for children while men obtain biomass fuel and food.

Dr. Smith's editorial - titled In Praise of Petroleum? - points out, "if all 2 billion people shifted to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for household fuel (energy modernization), it would add less than 2% to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fossil fuels. In terms of human health, a shift to LPG would actually result in a net reduction of human exposures to air pollution that would be substantially larger than today's total exposure from all fossil fuel emissions." Looking at it another way "efficiency increases in the world automobile fleet of just 0.5% per year (5.1% over 10 years, which is not much more than 1 mile per gallon) would free up annually sufficient fuel energy for the cooking needs of all 2 billion people well before the year of the next Earth Summit (Rio+20)."

It is immoral to suggest denying developing countries the public health benefits of economic / energy transition in pursuit of the exclusive goal of CO2 reduction. The public health benefits of such a transition are enormous and indisputable. It is particularly egregious when the suggestion comes from citizens of societies whose baseline emissions are orders of magnitude higher. The global warming problem like the obesity epidemic stems from the over indulgence of societies that have made this transition not those seeking to achieve a basic standard of living. Yes, Roger it reeks of "green fascism" - modernize don't criminalize.

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