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It doesn't take a world-class bargain-hunter to recognize that the price of anything, from groceries to electronics, is impossible to assess without considering hidden costs. Like that big-screen TV? Better ask about the added cost of cables and digital sound. A home listed below market price can seem great - until repairs to the cracked foundation, faulty wiring and leaky plumbing are factored in.
Yet for decades, the U.S. has embraced an energy policy blithely ignorant of the true price tag of driving our highways and providing electricity to our homes. That was underscored this week with the release of a new study that finds burning fossil fuels is costing the U.S. $120 billion a year in health care costs.
That's an enormous but largely ignored sum of money. Americans are far more likely to scream over paying pennies more at the pump or on their utility bills than to bother to notice the much greater cost associated with the thousands of premature deaths and serious illnesses tied to pollution from coal and oil.
What's particularly stunning about the study, conducted by the National Research Council and released Monday by the National Academy of Sciences, is that the $120 billion does not include the costs of climate change (or many other costs that can be linked to pollution). Factoring in such long-term threats as coastal flooding from rising sea levels, loss of farmland or the threat posed to national security could make the health care price tag seem like small potatoes.
Coal-fired power plants are a particularly troublesome factor in these calculations because they discharge so much pollution into the atmosphere. How can renewable alternatives compete when their greatest assets - their lack of hidden costs - aren't factored into the equation?
The findings also remind us just how misguided it is to think that current federal and state gas taxes cover the cost of driving. The tax may build highways and bridges (however inadequately), but it ignores the damage done to the air we breathe or the atmospheric changes wrought by greenhouse gases.
Nearly 20,000 people die prematurely each year because of the hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and particulates that pour out of all those tailpipes and smokestacks. We subsidize the true cost of all that pollution with our lives. Have we no value?
What would it take to put fossil fuels on an even playing field with less-polluting forms of energy? For starters, some experts suggest, gasoline and diesel prices would probably have to increase at least 23 to 38 cents per gallon just to cover the environmental damage.
Cap-and-trade provisions in the climate change legislation pending in Congress would no doubt help the nation transition away from coal or at least take measures to reduce its impact. But unless the Senate embraces the bipartisan compromise recently touted by Sens. John Kerry and Lindsey Graham, the odds of that happening this year seem quite slim.
Continuing to ignore all the hidden costs associated with our carbon-fueled economy is like living on credit cards with outrageously high interest rates. We can either pay a little bit now or a whole lot later on. Any rational consumer would choose to settle the bill as soon as possible.
Caravan
$120 billion in escalated health care costs? I think it's time we stop the fear tactics by the green propagandists to get their way by any means necessary.
Carlhk1
Yet for decades, the U.S. has embraced an energy policy blithely ignorant of the true price tag of driving our highways and providing electricity to our homes. That was underscored this week with the release of a new study that finds burning fossil fuels is costing the U.S. $120 billion a year in health care costs.
That's an enormous but largely ignored sum of money. Americans are far more likely to scream over paying pennies more at the pump or on their utility bills than to bother to notice the much greater cost associated with the thousands of premature deaths and serious illnesses tied to pollution from coal and oil.
What's particularly stunning about the study, conducted by the National Research Council and released Monday by the National Academy of Sciences, is that the $120 billion does not include the costs of climate change (or many other costs that can be linked to pollution). Factoring in such long-term threats as coastal flooding from rising sea levels, loss of farmland or the threat posed to national security could make the health care price tag seem like small potatoes.
Coal-fired power plants are a particularly troublesome factor in these calculations because they discharge so much pollution into the atmosphere. How can renewable alternatives compete when their greatest assets - their lack of hidden costs - aren't factored into the equation?
The findings also remind us just how misguided it is to think that current federal and state gas taxes cover the cost of driving. The tax may build highways and bridges (however inadequately), but it ignores the damage done to the air we breathe or the atmospheric changes wrought by greenhouse gases.
Nearly 20,000 people die prematurely each year because of the hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and particulates that pour out of all those tailpipes and smokestacks. We subsidize the true cost of all that pollution with our lives. Have we no value?
What would it take to put fossil fuels on an even playing field with less-polluting forms of energy? For starters, some experts suggest, gasoline and diesel prices would probably have to increase at least 23 to 38 cents per gallon just to cover the environmental damage.
Cap-and-trade provisions in the climate change legislation pending in Congress would no doubt help the nation transition away from coal or at least take measures to reduce its impact. But unless the Senate embraces the bipartisan compromise recently touted by Sens. John Kerry and Lindsey Graham, the odds of that happening this year seem quite slim.
Continuing to ignore all the hidden costs associated with our carbon-fueled economy is like living on credit cards with outrageously high interest rates. We can either pay a little bit now or a whole lot later on. Any rational consumer would choose to settle the bill as soon as possible.
Readers respond
We are dolts if we don't realize that we pay the price for our environmental apathy with debilitating ailments like emphysema, asthma, coronary artery disease and cancer. Take note of what the environment is doing to the toads, the salamanders, the birds and the fish in the sea; pretty soon the environment will do the same to thee.Caravan
$120 billion in escalated health care costs? I think it's time we stop the fear tactics by the green propagandists to get their way by any means necessary.
Carlhk1
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