How many other big categories have trillion dollar externalities? It’s only a $20 trillion economy - can the list be longer than 20 things?
And when we say something costs a $1 trillion in externalities annually, that should literally mean money that can be picked back up into the economy if you can clean it up. Mostly, to put it bluntly, because less people are having their lives cut short.
I find thinking about the scale of the damages and really trying to appreciate it is what creates the moral imperative to act. My personal belief is that technology is always the way forward. E.g. That by 2050 we could reduce the driving externality by 90% through automation. That we will eliminate coal for renewables.
I have less of a feel for what the technological path forward is for non-utility & transport air pollution - for some reason it’s a lot harder to grasp the damage being done. It’s certainly less visceral.
The drop is SO2 from utilities (coal) is particularly impressive. But a 20% overall drop in just a few years is kind of stunning - it works out to savings of $1.6 trillion per decade. That’s $1.6 trillion in economic damage from air pollution which will not be occurring due to progress in cleaning up our environment.
Sometimes it’s very important to step back and remind ourselves how much progress really is being made.