Climate policy not only can benefit future generations: the here-and-now benefits of clean air are a compelling reason to phase out fossil fuels.

In addition to reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, policies that curtail the use of fossil fuels reduce emissions of many other air pollutants that harm human health, including particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide. In fact, some studies that have assigned monetary values to the damages from carbon dioxide and these ‘co-pollutants’ have put higher values on the latter. Co-pollutant intensity (the ratio of co-pollutant damages to carbon dioxide emissions) varies across emission sources, and for this reason the pattern of emissions reductions across locations and economic sectors is important for both efficiency and equity.

The World Health Organization characterizes air pollution as ‘the world's largest single environmental health risk’. Outdoor air pollution is responsible worldwide for 3.7 million deaths annually.

Valuing the Human Costs of Air Pollution

A multi-country analysis by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) concluded in 2014 that outdoor air pollution (specifically, particulate matter and ozone) was responsible for 2.45 million premature deaths annually in the OECD countries plus China and India (see Table 26.1). To monetize these impacts, the OECD multiplied the number of deaths by the ‘value of a statistical life’ (VSL), computed as a function of national income per capita, adding 10 per cent for the costs of non-fatal illnesses. The resulting total cost of human health effects of outdoor air pollution in these countries amounted to $3.5 trillion per year, with the OECD member countries accounting for about half and China and India for the rest.

In these calculations, the study used country-specific VSLs that place a lower value on air pollution deaths in India and China than in the wealthier OECD countries, offering the following rationale: