The Write Direction: Going cold on the heat

AS USUAL, it’s all about the weather, but some interesting and disturbing side effects are becoming known following research being done overseas.

For years we have received health warnings about the fact that really hot weather can create unfortunate circumstances, especially for older people.

With our community now focusing on global warming and its health effects, questions are also asked of the methods we employ to create the power needed to run our air conditioners for cooling and heating purposes.

The very obvious answer in delivering temperature levels to the point where neither the heat nor the cold creates death for our older residents, is to run our heating or cooling devices.

This however creates greater power demands.

Will that endanger our environment due to the way our electricity is produced?

Heat kills within just a few days of temperatures rising because it swiftly alters the electrolytic balance in weaker and older people.

But as research points out it is the cold that creates far more deaths amongst people than the heat.

A recent comprehensive study published in The Lancet shows that while heat kills half a million people each year, it is the cold that is responsible for more than 4.5 million deaths over the same period.

The cold is the villain that takes over nine times the number of lives each year than the heat does and we must be continually concerned about it.

Many medical people in the world are saying that “cheaper or lower cost power” is the easiest way of solving unnecessary deaths due to the heat and the cold extremes each year.

In fact, deaths from extreme temperatures in the USA have more than halved since 1960 due to air conditioning and lower cost power sources.

Studies note that lower natural gas prices have saved an estimated 12,500 lives each winter in America.

The big problem there is that climate policies prioritising reducing carbon dioxide emissions over energy affordability can lead to more deaths during times of climate extremes.

By John BLACKBOURN