Carbon emissions impact climate and health

I had assumed this was blatantly obvious, but it appears not:

Writing online Jan. 22 in the journal Environmentahal Research Letters, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers Gregory Nemet, Tracey Holloway and Paul Meier report that the value of "co-benefits" — especially improved public health due to better air quality — rarely factors into assessments of climate change policy.

"The debate is really about how expensive this is going to be, and it excludes the social benefit," says Nemet, an assistant professor of public affairs and environmental studies at the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. "That hasn't really been part of the equation."

The researchers found that the health benefits of reducing carbon emissions pay for the cost of reducing emissions:

These benefits far outweigh the costs of carbon dioxide mitigation, which currently proposed policies limit to less than $30 per ton.

"At least in the near term — about 10 years in climate change policy — you can actually offset all the costs of climate policy by the benefits you get to human health, including reduced health care costs and improved quality of life from people being healthier and living longer," says Nemet.