I hope that your economic situation for the new year includes a job, a roof over your head, and available medical care if needed.
A key issue in the election was the cost of fuel and groceries. The cost of these things, and everything else, is in large part affected by the cost of energy.
The AMA recognizes the importance of addressing “unmet health-related social needs” such as housing instability, food insecurity, transportation barriers, and utility challenges. Yet it prioritizes climate change supposedly due to human CO2 emissions as a “public health crisis,” and the “free” energy sources promoted for solving it are far from free, as the graph shows.
Replacing reliable, affordable, abundant energy with intermittent, weather-dependent sources worsens those unmet health-related social needs, especially for the “marginalized” groups for which medical organizations express such concern. Higher costs are inevitable—for housing construction and maintenance and thus rents; growing, transporting, and refrigerating food; heating and cooling; and manufacturing medical supplies.
The healthcare sector is said to be responsible for 8.5% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Efforts to reduce this may have a direct impact on your medical treatment. Instead of the most widely used anesthetic gas, desflurane (global warming potential the equivalent of 2,540 kg CO2), you might receive sevoflurane (with a 130 kg CO2 impact). Had a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of CO2 footprint been included in clinical trials, desflurane might never have been approved.
It is suggested that an LCA of environmental impacts including carbon footprint be included as an end point in randomized clinical trials—for example, surgical vs. endoscopic removal of early colon cancer or surgery vs. glucocorticoid injection of patients with carpal tunnel syndrome.
A source of funding for measures claimed to address or mitigate climate change—which primarily benefit law firms and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—is lawsuits and legislation against oil and gas industries for allegedly hiding the climate dangers of their products.
N.Y. Governor Kathy Hochul signed a bill that will fine fuel producers $75 billion over the next 25 years to pay for damage purportedly caused to the climate, based on the amount of greenhouse gases they released into the atmosphere between 2000 and 2018. It will apply to any company that the New York Department of Environmental Conservation determines is responsible for more than 1 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Vermont previously passed such a law.
There are more than 28 lawsuits pending against oil companies.
Fines and damages will of course be paid by consumers of the companies’ products.
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