Copenhagen: Is government healthcare contributing to climate change?

As the world looks to the Copenhagen climate conference for solutions to climate change, it may sound odd to raise the role that healthcare might play in global warming. But a life-cycle view of healthcare illustrates how some root-causes of illness, including global warming, are linked to the very economic systems that fund care. Do we have to sacrifice tomorrow's wellbeing for a healthier today?

Canada is a great example. For all the criticism it receives, especially from its southern neighbor, Canada's single-payer healthcare system does a good job of equitably distributing healthcare that keeps its population healthy. And most Canadians applaud the care they receive. Those are good things. As a government funded system, it relies on individual and corporate taxes to pay for care, including the $30 billion in taxes paid by the Canadian oil sands industry each year. That's where the picture get murky.

Canada has the world's 2nd largest petroleum reserves after Saudi Arabia, estimated at 170 billion barrels. Each day 2.8 million barrels are extracted, 60% for the US market. Half of reserves are locked in oil sands and cleansing the raw hydrocarbons from sand and clay is extremely resource intensive. The think-tank Rand estimates that oil sand extraction produces 10-30% more greenhouse gases than regular oil production. On top of this, there is the environmental devastation that has been wreaked on the province of Alberta, where the sands are spread over an area roughly the size of the country of England. Extraction turns virgin forest into a moonscape: requiring the removal of all trees so that steam shovels-- burning 16,000 liters of diesel a day-- can scoop up the top layer of dirt and sand. Then millions of gallons of heated water is used to power wash the crude from the crud it clings to. And that's before the actual refining process begins.

Is this just an inevitable reality of economics and political expedience, that today's social costs require morally questionable funding sources? Is it any different than using tobacco taxes to fund anti-smoking efforts, or does Canada face a moral quandary where today's healthcare for Canadians is being provided at the expense of everyone's health tomorrow?