The growing toll of death and illness from the climate crisis can be seen in the latest report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) on injuries caused by extreme weather.
The report covers deaths and hospitalisations from heat, bushfires, rain storms and cold — although heat accounted for 78% of hospitalisations in the decade to 2022 and 43% of deaths over the decade to 2021. While the level and nature of health impacts are related to whether Australia is experiencing an El Niño or La Niña weather event, the number of weather-related hospitalisations is increasing over time, reflecting that the number of extreme heat days per year is now significantly higher than even 20 years ago. The number of hospitalisations for heat-related injuries in 2020-21 and 2021-22, marked by La Niña and higher than average rainfall, were still higher than in the El Niño years of 2014-16; as the AIHW notes, a La Niña year now is warmer than an El Niño year in the 1980s.
And while heat hospitalisations are predominantly of older people (more than half are of people over 45), more than 40% are of young people (8.4% of children under 14). There are also a range of heat-related impacts that don’t show up in the hospitalisation data. According to AIHW, “high temperatures are also linked to irritability, fatigue, and decreased performance, which can increase the risk of injury by impacting behaviour such as operating vehicles and power tools. There is evidence to suggest that higher daily temperatures are associated with an increased propensity for assault. The risk of drowning deaths has also been shown to increase during heatwaves.”
The AIHW also noted in a 2022 report that it’s hard to accurately assess the undoubted health impacts of bushfire smoke exposure over the long term due to its sporadic and infrequent nature.
One figure not covered in the new AIHW report is the health impact of air pollution and in particular coal-fired power plant pollution. The 2022 report noted that in 2018, particulate matter pollution accounted for more than 3,200 deaths and 1.3% of the total burden of disease.
A 2018 study found that particulate matter from five coal-fired power stations by themselves was responsible for 279 premature deaths a year in the Sydney, Central Coast and Hunter Valley regions, along with other health impacts like low birth weight and diabetes. One of those power stations, Liddell, has since been shut.
In the United States, deaths from particulate matter are estimated to be between 100,000 and 300,000 a year. A 2023 report from the Sierra Club estimated that the premature death toll from the remaining fleet of US coal-fired power plants totalled 3,800 a year. Remarkably, only a small fraction of those deaths occurred in the same area as the power stations involved — the great bulk of the deaths were recorded further afield or, in some cases, in another state entirely. A 2021 European study identified over 16,000 premature deaths from coal-fired power plant emissions across the continent.
The vast death toll from coal-fired power stations — 200-plus every year in NSW alone — is the great unspoken cost of our failure to develop a coherent renewables development strategy. Because the victims are unknown and unnamed, and their families may not even be aware of the role particulate matter played in their deaths, they don’t figure in public debate about the energy transition, and are absent from coverage of, for example, NSW Labor’s enthusiasm for propping up unviable power stations like Eraring with taxpayer money.
They also represent blood on the hands of every coal lobbyist, fossil fuel-friendly politician, NIMBY property owner and climate denialist commentator who has tried to derail the transition to renewables, the silent death toll of their self-interest. But it’s been normalised as business as usual, with taxpayers, communities and families left to bear the burden. Denialism and feet-dragging have a body count.
Have you or someone you know been affected by poor air quality? Or are you simply terrified by the increasing intensity of extreme heat events? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Two most recent royal commissions of Inquiry into the causation of the massive spread of bush-fires have been ignored by the Federal government of the day.
My having read the recommendations in the final report of each Inquiry had stated the need for a quantity of water bombing aircraft, my estimation is that 24 water bomber aircraft could assault the fire fronts from expanding into seemingly out of control bush-fires.
These specially designed aircraft are already being employed in countries outside of Australia.
The Black Saturday RCI the final report highlighted the need for such a fleet of aircraft, consider the cyclic number of water bombing aircraft dumping with their much higher volume of water dropped on each occasion which should be at the fire-front of whichever future bush-fires, will be a more effective means of extinguishing a bush-fire will be far more capable than the ragtag of small helicopters and even the hiring of the Elvis heavy-lift helicopter at an enormous cost to hire.
The 2019-2020 raging out of control bush-fires could have been far better battled to extinguishment than the usual employment of the same ragtag number of small helicopters flying to and fro with their little buckets of water.
To do otherwise with the usual much smaller capacity of miscellaneous small helicopters and their small bucket volume of water, is a fool’s game by comparison.
Using the high volume water bombing aircraft in rotation, remember we are talking their capacity to load their own water volume via their specially designed ” ability to scoop up each load of their water carrying capacity” and then back into their pre-planned rotation of bombing the fire fronts to prevent any further spread of the hugely destructive bush-fires.
This fleet of water bombing aircraft will necessitate its own control room to ensure the equidistant safety margins of time & space between each aircraft. Also the number of aircraft deployed as considered necessary.
Now, that’s a far better strategy than spending our national revenues on the US life-destroying constant rotation… Of updating our nation’s excessive weaponry.
Bugger off the AUKUS agreement, which has become little other than the siphoning of our nation’s revenues to the want’s of the US Arms & Weapons manufacturing corporations.
Only fools (includes the USA war dogs) believe that China is going to attack Australia
The massive billions of dollars being spent on the 2nd hand acquisition or new deadly weaponry recommended by Australia’s component of US military advisers (which I believe is a massive rort of Australia’s taxpayer revenues) that could be otherwise expended on saving the lives of people wildlife & property… Per the use of high volume water-bombing aircraft managed in its own independent headquarters, liaising with the State fire control department.
This is so much sense. But Scomo’s, “I don’t hold the hose” comment is indicative of government policy. We are in a situation similar to that of WW1, when the absence of detailed planning almost lost us the war along with all the dead, until Monash, an engineer, came along and made detailed plans for every attack which logically combined every aspect – artillery, gas, troops, etc, with exact timing. It won the war. The mega-fires we now have need a similar approach. A permanent fleet of effetive water bombers (laid up in winter for maintainance) would be good. Combined with 24/7 awareness of fires starting, it would go a long way to hitting them early, while small. Many fires start during thunderstorms, often with no rain, so weather is not always a legitimate excuse for delay. In view of the death and destruction caused by bush fires it is tragic that everything needed is not made available. How the politicians can live with themselves is entirely beyond me. As vote-winners go it would be unbeatable, apart from anything else.
Sorry, effective – not effete! Effete seems to be what we have now, judging from results. No reflection on the fire-fighters on the ground, except as they are starved of resources.
As climate change renders natural disasters ever more, well, disastrous, floods and fires will escalate. While floods present more of a challenge to mitigation, fires can certainly be extinguished earlier. There seems to be no plan to do so.
Surely there’s a satellite up there that can pinpoint a fire within minutes of it starting? Let’s have some Battle Of Britain stuff, chaps. “Alpha flight, scramble scramble scramble! Vector 240, 15 minutes, little old lady on roof, nighty on fire. God be with you.”
Ageist attempt at humour is neither amusing nor acceptable.
Point taken. I’ll try to curb my imagination.
Okay “Footballer in jocks, you can identify him, he has a can in his hand”.
Lighten up. 😉
Hey Bernard .. checking with Tony Abbott before we comment.
Exactly, for the past generation it’s apparently been due to ‘high immigration’ & ‘unsustainable population growth’ leading to higher emissions and warming, according to both major parties, media and think tanks or NGOs.
Anglosphere greenwashing of bigotry and fossil fuels to deny, delay and deflect vs. following sensible EU standards, strategies etc.; too easy in Australia…..
Clean electricity will improve everyone’s health and welfare. Instead of cowering in terror of the climate, this opportunity for change, which has no downside, should be fervently grasped and rejoiced over.
Instead, we have in charge total fools like Abbott. Albanese is worse than Abbott because he is heaping ever more damage into the climate even while knowing what the results will be. If that isn’t a definition of “Fool” tell me what is. I include Tanya in that.
It would be enlightening to see the rates of disease around coal-fired power stations. I’d always assumed that my mother’s lymphoma was related to the fact that she lived less than 5km from one, but did not mention that to her as it was a bit late. Without access to statistics of air pollution around such plants, or disease statistics, it is impossible to know. Isn’t that why no-one bothers to collect or publicise these? I mean, we wouldn’t want to demonise the owners of these power plants would we? Nor would we want to warn employees and neighbours of the risks, as then there might be pressure to do something about it. The loss of jobs is much better publicised than the loss of health from those affected by this industry. Same argument was used for asbestos and now for engineered stone. We continue on the same path, with no-one doing anything until the issue can no longer be hidden.
Ah, so the vast death toll from coal-fired power stations is due to the government’s failure to replace coal with renewables? It would be more accurate to say “replace coal with renewables-plus-gas”. However this cannot be done, because there is simply not enough gas. Use your brains, guys – renewables alone cannot possibly replace coal in the NSW grid. Handing our future energy supplies to the gas industry is the wrong way to go.
“…..because there is simply not enough gas.”
There is an over-abundance of Gas. Here in our neighbourhood, the Gas Belt stretches from Timor Leste to the Gulf Papua.
Well, you are right there! We have enough gas, coal and uranium in the ground to outlast our species. What I meant was that the government had failed to forward contract enough gas production to match the potential expansion in renewable generation. Without full-scale gas generation to back it, full-scale renewable capacity is next to useless.