Beth Gardiner

“dirty air causes 7 million early deaths annually,2 more than AIDS, diabetes, and traffic accidents combined, making it the single biggest environmental threat to health.3 New data suggests that number may climb even higher, pushing air pollution into the very top tier of global killers.”
― Beth Gardiner, Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution

“Looking back, what seems clear to him now is that while making choices that would affect millions of people, over decades, neither he nor those around him stopped to take a longer-term view. It’s especially upsetting, he says, to recall that he and his colleagues were aware of diesel’s dangers. Concerned enough to add a nominal premium into their tax overhaul, but not enough to rethink the system they were creating. More than any one decision, it’s that short-sightedness he regrets now: “It’s a horrible thing to say, but it almost didn’t seem relevant to ask what the long-term consequences were. Didn’t seem like that’s what my job was.” In his view—and I agree—that flaw wasn’t unique to one party, or one time. Nor even one country. It’s “bound up in the nature of our politics. You’re operating one budget to the next, one election to the next,” he says. “The mistake is the way we were doing the job.”
― Beth Gardiner, Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution