Burning the World Down

Burning the World Down1

It has become a disturbing trend for inhabitants of major world cities like Beijing or Mexico City to wake up, turn on the news, and being told to wear masks on their way out to work because breathing the air outside could severely harm them. Air pollution is an environmental issue that not only endangers nature, but also threats humanity at gunpoint. Even though Industrialization allowed humanity to build a world of massive cities and monuments, never-ending production and consumption, and multiplying opportunities and innovations, those Manchester patrons superposed human thought and emotion over its prime necessity: air to breath. Blinded by the industrial and economic bonanza in the last 200 years, we have slowly but steadily contributed to the poisoning of the atmosphere through a diverse group of activities that share the human hand in common. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 75% of the Greenhouse Gas emissions are carbon dioxide, while the remaining 25% are nitrogen, methane and fluorocarbons, of which some are toxic. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, carbon dioxide was one of the main components of the atmosphere even before the Industrial Revolution. However, in 2009 the EPA started considering carbon dioxide a pollutant because its concentration has spiked from 280 parts per million in the 1800s to 384 ppm in the last decade and continues to increase at a rate of 2 ppm per year (Nathanson 2013). According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the main global sources of human Greenhouse Gas enhancement are energy supply (25%), industry (19%), transport (13%) and residential/commercial buildings (8%), agriculture (14%), forestry (17%) and waste (3%). The EPA also disclosed a list of 187 hazardous air pollutants, among which ground level ozone from auto emissions was included, that were to be drastically reduced in concentration after the signing of the Clean Air Act in the US. Even though their concentrations were not as predominant as those of carbon dioxide, these are accounted for risk of cancer or other serious health effects, such as reproductive effects or birth defects, and adverse environmental and ecological effects (Kukreja). The main sources of these hazardous pollutants are mostly fossil fuels, which are intricately connected to all the activities named above. However, these emissions are also associated to a shorter extent to natural causes like wind-generated dusts, fogs and sea sprays, fires and volcanoes, pollen and other components from biological processes, as well as products of chemical reactions in the atmosphere between elements from both origins also known as secondary causes (Phalen 2014). As of today, the scientific community has reached to a general consensus about the causes of air pollution as the coalescence of anthropogenic, natural and secondary nature, although the human induced component stands out significantly. The scientific community also recognizes the classification of anthropogenic sources as stationary (e.g. factories, residences, stores, etc.) and mobile (e.g. cars, airplanes, trains, etc.). According to Dr. Robert F. Phalen from the University of California at Irvin School of Medicine, several research communities including the EPA, the National Research Center of the Academy of Sciences, the Health Effects Institute (HEI) and the EPAs Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) have also identified common high-priority needs for research on areas in which there is insufficient data and even where there is still strong disagreement between scientific parties (Phalen 2014), not to mention the infinite number of caveats that remain unanalyzed. The identification of susceptibility factors of different populations to varying exposures to airborne particulate matter (PM) remains as one of the most challenging endeavors within air pollution research because of the countless variables involved. As better collection, sampling and statistical methods and devices are developed throughout the years, the assessment of continuously varying PM levels within different spatial distribution of populations with an immense variety of physical and epidemiological characteristics will be more affordable and accurate, so less ambiguous conclusions will be drawn. Another aspect that spawns further discussion is the increasing discovery a countless diversity of compounds in the atmosphere. Dr. Phalen poses the following debate question: how contaminated must the air be before it is considered impure? In his review on airborne particulate matter suggests that even when an air standard has been accepted as adequately protective of health, some individuals may develop aversions to its odor, allergic responses, or unexplained sensitivities (Phalen 2014), from where the dispute between the accuracy versus the practicality of such measures arises, not to mention that as technological processes evolve, as the economy improves (so that controls can be afforded), and as medical knowledge advances, air standards tend to become more stringent (Phalen 2014). The recent findings about the variety of causes, components, consequences and reactions to air pollution has posed a litany of new questions and enigmas to the scientific community, although Dr. Phalen depicts one clear conclusion: given that the issue has caught fire in many scientific fronts, besides also those of economics and the social sciences, specialists must acquire a broader spectrum of knowledge to address the complexity of the issue without bypassing any relevant factor (Phalen 2014). The channel from scientists to policy makers and the general public must be clear of obstacles to successfully combat the air pollution situation. Although the sources or generators of air pollution are settled at a local or even at a regional scale, the natural flow of air spreads and relocates this contamination all around the globe. Just as the US National Research Council proposes:Recent advances in air pollution monitoring methods and models, including satellite-borne sensors, have made it possible to show that long-range transport of air pollutants, including transpacific and transatlantic trajectories, does occur. These studies make it clear that the world has only one atmosphere and that adverse impacts of emitted pollutants often cannot be confined to one location, one region, or even one continent. (Committee on the Significance of International Transport of Air Pollutants 2010)Therefore, the main reason to consider air pollution a global issue is the fact that property rights cannot be efficiently enforced. UCLA Professor of Economics Armen A. Alchian defines property right as the exclusive authority to determine how a resource is used, whether that resource is owned by government or by individuals (Alchian 2008). Even though a limit such as national borders entitles sovereignty and responsibility over actions and events within a states territory to the domestic authority, we must not forget that these are human constructs. There is no way to asses and control individually every source of contamination and it is an almost impossible endeavor to attribute corresponding responsibility to each and every issuer. Henceforth, any efficient solution to this contemporary version of the tragedy of commons would have to address the issue as a global phenomenon rather than a local incident, as air pollution moves freely without passport or visa.The current air pollution problematic has many delicate implications that could render the world system unstable. Given that more than three quarters of global air pollution can be attributed to fossil fuels, especially to hydrocarbons, the impact of the oil industry and consumption on the environment is vast and widespread. Health effects from exposure to gasoline include cancer, central nervous system toxicity and poisoning (ORourke and Connolly 2013). Moreover, health risks for populations close to oil refineries and other factories that generate these polluting emissions range from severe burns or irritations and headaches to chronic lung disease and even psychosis (ORourke and Connolly 2013). However, as UCLAs environmental scientist Dana ORourke and MITs urban planner Sarah Conolly note, this medical concern has also become an environmental justice issue as these impacts [gasolines] tend to be concentrated particularly among lower-income populations that live closer to service stations, refineries, and transfer or storage facilities (ORourke and Connolly 2013), not to mention that this disproportional allocation of the social cost of gasoline to low-income populations primes in developing countries, where the inequality gap is wider (ORourke and Connolly 2013). Therefore, excessive levels of pollution would not only collapse the natural ecosystem where it occurs, but would also generate massive migration and relocation of populations, especially low-income, in search of clean air.More complications arise when we look at the flip side of the issue taking oil as an example. Oil is the worlds most valuable commodity, serves a diversity of purposes, which include transportation, heating, electricity, and industrial applications, and is an input into over 2000 end products (ORourke and Connolly 2013); additionally taxes from oil are a major source of income for more than 90 governments and account for the majority of exportations of several developing countries (ORourke and Connolly 2013). From a macroeconomic perspective, global international trade depends on the buying and selling of petroleum and its derivatives. The International Labor Organization calculates that the oil industry directly employs more than 2 million workers, and also estimates that one job in the oil production or refining sector generates up to four additional jobs in related industries (ORourke and Connolly 2013). Consequently, an overwhelming solution to air pollution problem would jeopardize the stem of the world economy and with it the well-being of millions. The trade-off between a sustainable environment and a stable economy bears colossal costs on either side of the balance. Although governments attempt to regulate the emissions and environmentalist organizations try to increase public awareness on the issue, the economic incentives remain too slim to motivate a radical massive lifestyle change among the general population. As of today, we might at least search for a partially efficient balance between both offerings before we reach to a viable and definite solution. International cooperation poses as the most promising course of action to find a solution with campaigns like UNEPs Environmental Governance or the signing of the Kyoto Protocol. Only time will tell if we burned the world down for the right reasons.

BibliographyAlchian, Armen A. "Property Rights." The Concise Encycolpedia of Economics. 2nd ed. Liberty Fund, 2008.Committee on the Significance of International Transport of Air Pollutants. Global Sources of Local Pollution: An Assessment of Long-Range Transport of Key Air Pollutants to and from the United States. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2010. 1-2.Kukreja, Rinkesh. "Causes, Effects and Solutions of Air Pollution." Conserve Energy Future. Accessed November 16, 2014. http://www.conserve-energy-future.com/causes-effects-solutions-of-air-pollution.php.Nathanson, Jerry. "Greenhouse Gases." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. October 15, 2013. Accessed November 15, 2014. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/10772/air-pollution/286162/Greenhouse-gases.O'Rourke, Dara, and Sarah Connolly. "Just Oil? The Social Distribution of Environmental and Social Impacts of Oil Production and Consumption." Annual Review of Environment and Resources 28 (2013): 587-617. Accessed November 19, 2014. http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.energy.28.050302.105617.Phalen, Robert. "The Particulate Air Pollution Controversy." Nonlinearity in Biology, Toxicology, and Medicine 2, no. 4 (2014): 259-92. Accessed November 26, 2014. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2659607/."Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions." Environmental Protection Agency. June 12, 2014. Accessed November 15, 2014. http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/sources.html."Pollutants and Sources." Environmental Protection Agency. June 12, 2014. Accessed November 15, 2014. http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/pollsour.html."Transboundary Air Pollution." Environmental Protection Agency. June 12, 2014. Accessed November 15, 2014. http://www2.epa.gov/international-cooperation/transboundary-air-pollution.