Thanks for sharing this! Curating. I’d be excited to see more essays that dive into the histories of how societies accomplished something analogous to what we might want to do — or attempt to answer questions like: “What’s something that seems ~normal to us that future people might think was a constant tragedy or unnecessary problem until it was ~solved? How do we solve this?”[1]
I also really appreciated the back-of-the-envelope calculations for backing e.g. claims of cost-effectiveness (see e.g. the estimate for lost wages in the appendix on costs and benefits).
Re: “Part of the problem with making these facts salient might be that our disgust reactions aren’t firing in helpful ways: unclean water is visibly (and olfactorily) unclean, but bad air is perfectly disguised as clean air, and contextual cues are needed. So the first step is bringing the human costs of unclean air into the open.” I thought the emphasis on the visual aspect was interesting! And it seems plausible, so I’d be interested in testing the hypothesis as if it’s true, it seems like there’s a potential for advocacy through things like visualizations. (I still remember e.g. the NYT’s 3D visual of particles spreading in a room (paywalled), and there’s also this piece on school ventilation (also paywalled).[2])
I noticed that I was tempted to check how much I agreed with a bunch of claims in the essay — like the implication that 2%/year is a conservative likelihood for a pandemic as bad as COVID (“Conservatively assuming a yearly likelihood of a pandemic at least as bad as Covid of 2%”).[3] There are a lot of (sub)claims in the essay and I expect that I’d disagree with some if I started checking, but I mostly think this is due to a virtue of the post; the claims are easy to argue with.
It seems useful to re-emphasize that improving air quality to slow (or stop) the spread of airborne diseases in richer countries seems to just make sense from those countries’ perspectives, even setting aside benefits to the rest of the world. (This is quite compatible with the approach taken in How much should governments pay to prevent catastrophes?)
I appreciated this note:
“The story of spreading access to clean water and sanitation is not over. Unsafe water causes more than a million deaths a year — the 13th leading risk factor on one way of slicing things up. Almost all the deaths from unsafe water are concentrated on poor countries, especially sub-Saharan Africa and India. And a solid 25% of the world lacks access to safely managed drinking water. But full access to clean water is no longer encumbered by knowledge about how diseases spread, or how to properly treat water: we have the blueprints.”
...the first step is bringing the human costs of unclean air into the open.
In the hopeful story, these costs become historical. Covid could be to airborne diseases like London’s cholera outbreaks and Great Stink were to waterborne diseases: a confluence of (i) “wow, as long as we know how to end this, we should”; and (ii) “huh, looks like we do increasingly know how to end this”.
This doesn’t sound crazy to me, but I want to check it for myself (or find a link that seems credible). I decided not to continue down the side-quest right now in the interest of time, but would be interested.
Thanks for sharing this! Curating. I’d be excited to see more essays that dive into the histories of how societies accomplished something analogous to what we might want to do — or attempt to answer questions like: “What’s something that seems ~normal to us that future people might think was a constant tragedy or unnecessary problem until it was ~solved? How do we solve this?”[1]
I also really appreciated the back-of-the-envelope calculations for backing e.g. claims of cost-effectiveness (see e.g. the estimate for lost wages in the appendix on costs and benefits).
Assorted other notes and questions:
I initially thought this would be about air pollution, which also seems like a very promising area for work. If you think it’s important to avoid the misconception, you could change the title.
Re: “Part of the problem with making these facts salient might be that our disgust reactions aren’t firing in helpful ways: unclean water is visibly (and olfactorily) unclean, but bad air is perfectly disguised as clean air, and contextual cues are needed. So the first step is bringing the human costs of unclean air into the open.” I thought the emphasis on the visual aspect was interesting! And it seems plausible, so I’d be interested in testing the hypothesis as if it’s true, it seems like there’s a potential for advocacy through things like visualizations. (I still remember e.g. the NYT’s 3D visual of particles spreading in a room (paywalled), and there’s also this piece on school ventilation (also paywalled).[2])
I noticed that I was tempted to check how much I agreed with a bunch of claims in the essay — like the implication that 2%/year is a conservative likelihood for a pandemic as bad as COVID (“Conservatively assuming a yearly likelihood of a pandemic at least as bad as Covid of 2%”).[3] There are a lot of (sub)claims in the essay and I expect that I’d disagree with some if I started checking, but I mostly think this is due to a virtue of the post; the claims are easy to argue with.
It seems useful to re-emphasize that improving air quality to slow (or stop) the spread of airborne diseases in richer countries seems to just make sense from those countries’ perspectives, even setting aside benefits to the rest of the world. (This is quite compatible with the approach taken in How much should governments pay to prevent catastrophes?)
I appreciated this note:
“The story of spreading access to clean water and sanitation is not over. Unsafe water causes more than a million deaths a year — the 13th leading risk factor on one way of slicing things up. Almost all the deaths from unsafe water are concentrated on poor countries, especially sub-Saharan Africa and India. And a solid 25% of the world lacks access to safely managed drinking water. But full access to clean water is no longer encumbered by knowledge about how diseases spread, or how to properly treat water: we have the blueprints.”
A relevant part from the post:
From the paywalled piece on school ventilation
This doesn’t sound crazy to me, but I want to check it for myself (or find a link that seems credible). I decided not to continue down the side-quest right now in the interest of time, but would be interested.