Earth Equity News

Report Shows Hidden Costs of Energy. By Jad Mouawad, NYTimes, October 19, 2009. "Most people can easily quote the price of gasoline or how much they pay for their power bills at home. But what's the cost of energy production and consumption on health? Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use [PDF links for each chapter, 350 pp], a new report from the National Research Council, a branch of the National Academies, tries to put a dollar figure on what economists call externalities. The study, however, comes with a major caveat: it did not look at the impact of energy on climate change and ecosystems, or at rising food prices and the risks to national security. Still, the report, which was requested by Congress in 2005, estimated that the hidden cost of energy on human health was $120 billion in 2005, the last year for which full data was available.