"If we succeed in meeting the targets for reducing greenhouse gases in road traffic that Germany has committed to, this directly reduces the pollutants in our breathing air." The necessary transition in traffic reduces both the risks to human health posed by particulate matter and the risk of global warming posed by CO2. It’s about healthy people on a healthy planet. And as an economist, I say that the German auto industry can profit if instead of braking, they invest resolutely in clean engines such as electro mobility, "says Ottmar Edenhofer, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) and Professor of Climate Economics at the Technical University of Berlin.
The German Government had commissioned the report in January with the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. In their statement, the 20 scientists from twelve disciplines call for efforts to reduce air pollution, which go far beyond driving bans, for example. Such short-term or small-scale measures, they argue, promise no significant reduction in the concentration of pollutants in the air. Instead, a "nationwide inter-agency strategy for air pollution control" is needed, the experts say.
Weblink to the 52 pages statement by the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina: https://www.leopoldina.org/en/press-1/news/stellungnahme-saubere-luft/
Weblink to the Leopoldina working group „Limit Values for Air Pollution“, including scientists of medicine, toxicology, biology, chemistry, epidemiology, technical sciences, statistics, economics, law, sociology, transport research, and materials science: https://www.leopoldina.org/en/policy-advice/working-groups/threshold-values-for-air-pollution/
