Switching To Renewable Energy Would Save $600 Billion And 50,000 Lives PER YEAR

According to a new study, "decarbonizing" the energy system in the United States (switching to renewable energy) would not only save the economy an estimated $600 billion per year, but it would also save up to 50,000 lives per year. There is no way to slice the issue to where it doesn't make sense; Switching to renewables is a massive win for public health and a huge win for the economy. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses the new report.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

According to a new study by the center for sustainability and the global environment in university of Wisconsin, Madison's Nelson Institute for environmental studies, a new study put forward by this group says that decarbonizing the us energy system, which basically in layman's terms, switching to renewable energy can not only save the United States $600 billion a year, but it could also potentially save more than 50,000 lives per year. By preventing 53,000, I think is the actual number, premature deaths every year deaths that are in fact caused by pollution from the burning of fossil fuels, asthma attacks, heart conditions, all kinds of other issues that arise in the human body, from the burning of fossil fuels. And so they've put out this new report showing us once again, that switching to renewable energy is not only great for the economy, but it is phenomenal for human health here in the United States.

At this point, there is no way you can spend switching to renewable energies in a bad light. Oh, well, it's too expensive for us. Nope. Actually, it's gonna save us a ton of money. Hundreds of billions of dollars. So you're oh, it's too expensive. Argument is immediately out the window, but what about the jobs? Cool. Now you don't work in the oil fields. You get to go work in the solar industry. You get to go work on wind turbines. We're not killing any jobs. We're just moving them from one place to another. Typically not even, you know, in a different state, just one industry to another. You don't have to worry about getting black lung when you're out there creating solar panels.

But here's the thing. Let me read this. The pollution reductions would save 53,200 premature deaths and provide 608 billion in annual benefits. The avoided deaths account for 98% of the monetary benefits, uh, particulate matter reductions offer further benefits including up to 25,600 avoided non-fatal heart attacks as well as preventing 5,000 asthma related emergency room visits and avoiding 3.6, 8 million days of lost work. I mean, isn't that what Republicans want? Like everybody get back to work. No sick days, no time off. No, none of that. Okay. Well, if you want that, you're gonna have to switch to renewable energy because this is one of the leading causes of illnesses that result in time off from work. So if y'all want people to get back to work, guess what? We're gonna have to stop the burning of these

Fossil fuels, which by the way, is 100% within our reach. We could do this. We as a country, just lack the will to do it. And one of the big reasons we lack the will to do it is because money from the fossil fuel industry is paying the people in charge to not do anything about it. Renewable energy is a winner. Again, there is no other way to slice it. Folks. We could do this. The technology exists to do this. It's the will to take action from the people in Washington, DC, because they're being paid to not take action. That is the only thing holding us back. And every year we don't take action. We're losing $608 billion. We're losing 50,000 premature lives. I'm sorry, we're losing 50,000 lives to premature death. That's the better way to say that it is infuriating because we have the numbers.