Guest blog Climate talks can solve another global crisis: Air pollution
Originally published in THE HILL on the 10th of November (during COP26) - now a guest blog here by Jason West, Ph.D., is a professor of environmental sciences and engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research connects air pollution, climate change, energy and health, through computer modeling of the global atmosphere. His lab’s studies have demonstrated the global health benefits of methane emission reductions to control ozone air pollution, as well as the global air quality and health co-benefits of aggressive GHG reductions. The UN COP26 meeting in Glasgow has so far brought successes in emission reduction pledges, but those successes are very likely insufficient to keep global warming from exceeding 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. But at stake is not only climate change. In Glasgow, world leaders also have a historic opportunity to end another global crisis — the plague of fossil-fueled air pollution. Globally,...