Would The Kyoto Protocol Actually Harm Human Health And The Environment? New Study Examines Treaty’s Unintended Consequences

By CEI Staff [1]

November 01, 1998

Washington, D.C. November 2, 1998 – The Competitive Enterprise Institute released a study today that challenges the core premise of the global warming treaty signed last year in Kyoto, Japan. Rather than protecting human and health and the environment, Could Kyoto Kill? The Mortality Costs of Climate Policies, by University of Texas-Austin Business Law Professor Frank Cross, calculates that the Kyoto Protocol could cause up to 183,000 deaths in the US alone.

"The climate policies currently under consideration, which are largely designed to decrease energy use, would create new risks and almost certainly cause more health harm than they would benefit health," stated Mr. Cross in the study. "The poor tend to consume relatively more energy and energy-intensive products per capita, and will be the hardest hit by price increases. Placing the greatest burdens on the poor also exacerbates the public health costs of global warming policy."

Some of these costs include:

Increased highway fatalities: Proposals to raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard, an auto fuel-efficiency measure, would cause approximately 1,650 additional highway deaths per year.

Worsened indoor air pollution: Heating and cooling efficiency measures necessarily reduce ventilation, exacerbating indoor air pollution. The 50 percent hike in efficiency under consideration would double pollutant concentrations and aggravate public health risks.

Poverty-related deaths: Wealthier is healthier. Less wealth means that fewer people can afford life-saving, energy-based technologies, ranging from better health care and nutrition to safer vehicles.

Before US and developing country negotiators making any negotiating commitments at this week’s UN climate treaty conference in Buenos Aires, it would be in their best interest to carefully examine the effect a drastic rise in energy prices would have on the well-being of their citizens.

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