Just before the delegates for the annual Conference of the Parties on climate change started meeting in Bonn this month, the Lancet, the leading British medical journal, published yet another major study showing that climate change is a growing health hazard.
The study revealed that hundreds of millions of people around the world are already suffering due to climate change. Infectious diseases are spreading faster due to warmer temperatures, hunger and malnourishment is worsening, allergy seasons are getting longer and sometimes it’s simply too hot for farmers to tend to their crops.
But what would happen if we treated climate change as a health problem rather than an environmental one?
As an expert in the political economy of climate change, I contend we can learn useful lessons from some relatively successful public health campaigns. Take smoking, for example.
We have successfully used advertising bans and warnings on cigarette packages to change perceptions about the dangers of burning tobacco, so perhaps a similar strategy will work to focus on the dangers of burning gasoline and diesel.
After all, most of climate change is caused because humans are burning fossil fuels at prodigious rates. This combustion generates carbon dioxide. It’s accumulating rapidly in the atmosphere, warming the planet and making storms, heatwaves and droughts an increasing problem for people in many places.
Cigarette advertising was actively promoting a hazardous product, and so the public health case was made for restricting advertising of cigarettes. Alarmed by the damage to human health caused by tobacco smoking, public authorities gradually transformed the public image of cigarettes from symbols of sophistication into objects of danger. Social life has now been largely disconnected from smoking.
Many countries require packaging that alerts smokers to the dangers of the “cancer sticks” they are purchasing, and many cartons carry dire health warnings. In some cases, images of the grievous bodily harm caused by prolonged exposure to tobacco smoke must be printed on cigarette cartons. It’s all designed to discourage smoking and make plain the damage it causes.
Campaigns against smoking have also emphasized the dangers to third parties, and children in particular, when they inhale second-hand smoke.
Now there are health hazards from another form of combustion. The health impacts of climate change are clear. So, perhaps it’s time to adapt the success of the campaign against burning and smoking tobacco to policy actions against burning gasoline and diesel in vehicles.
Like cigarettes used to be, internal combustion-engined vehicles are ubiquitous. According to advertisers, their possession and use apparently infers social status. Equated with freedom, despite the amount of time drivers spend stuck in traffic, gasoline-burning cars are supposedly the ultimate symbol of individualism, autonomy and power.
But cars are hazardous to both the driver and other people as well. Internal combustion engines generate urban pollution. They cause climate change. Everyone is endangered by climate change whether they drive or not. Climate change is the automobile equivalent of second-hand smoke.
So, how about a ban on advertising internal combustion engine-powered vehicles? No longer could they be shown as a symbol of glamour and sophistication to young people. Instead, the consequences of their widespread use could be highlighted.
Cigarette packaging displays health warnings, so why not have gasoline- and diesel-fueled cars decorated with images of disasters, floods, damaged buildings, hurricane devastation and the like?
Consumer choice need not be unduly restricted here. If people really want to buy this increasingly outdated technology, then regulations could easily allow each model of car to be sold with a choice of flood, pestilence, drought or fire damage decor.
The car companies would no doubt protest, as did the tobacco firms before them. But the larger public health concerns are much more important than automobile producers’ business plans.
While these practical measures alone won’t alone solve the climate change problem, they would surely help people focus on the need to move rapidly away from internal combustion engines and towards a safer and more healthy world.
At last! World premiere release of intense, evocative Les Baxter score for famous Roger Corman debut in series of Edgar Allan Poe tales starring Vincent Price, filmed for American International in evocatively-colored widescreen. While original session elements have long-since vanished, complete music tracks mixed into mono and assembled for film do remain. Slight variances in levels designed for later addition of dialog & effects in post-production could not be completely avoided but have been minimized during mastering of this CD. As a result, most cues have identical assemblies of film itself, albeit happily without dialog or effects! (We edited together short pieces to create better musical experience.) Every cue appears! Rare music-only elements survive courtesy MGM vaults, efforts of Taylor White of Percepto Records. Neat bonus! MGM commissioned Chace Productions to restore long-lost original "Overture", previously heard only with initial 1960 release of film in theaters. Chace provided newly-restored master to Intrada for this CD premiere as well! Les Baxter creates sometimes beautifully evocative, sometimes intensely scary score with some of his most striking and exciting music in a lengthy and successful career. Film itself was later re-titled THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. Les Baxter conducts. Intrada Special Collection release limited to 1200 copies!
With the first of eight cinematic Edgar Allan Poe adaptations produced by Roger Corman, House of Usher was an important project for Les Baxter. As such, he pulled out all the stops, scoring for full orchestra plus large choir and writing in an idiom both soothingly tonal and frighteningly dissonant. It is a lengthy score, with music covering literally three quarters of the film’s final 85-minute running time.
For this premiere release of Baxter’s score from House of Usher, we have edited and mastered the CD from the only surviving music elements available through MGM—the music-only dubbing masters used for the final soundtrack of the film. While these masters were complete and happily contained no sound effects or dialog, they did include the cue assemblies and crossfades used in the film as well as several quick fades at the end of some cues. These tapes also included the “potting” of various levels made by the original music editor to accommodate dialog and sound effects. These mono scoring elements were in remarkably clean shape overall, considering their frequent use with the steady re-release of the popular film over the years, including numerous foreigndubbed prints and video incarnations. For our CD, where possible, we have minimized any abrupt level changes, albeit some fluctuation in overall relative levels remains apparent. The dynamic range is reasonably crisp and effective throughout.
For the initial presentations of the film in 1960, a three-minute “Overture” was created by Baxter to help create the right mood for audiences as the show was about to begin. This sequence was subsequently dropped from re-release prints and home video presentations. For our CD, we were fortunate enough to have access to this complete and rarely-heard overture, recently restored and newly-mastered by Chace Productions for the video department of MGM. It is included at the start of the CD.
So let Les Baxter and his orchestra, complete with chorus, now usher you into the terrifying world of Edgar Allan Poe and his immortal tale of Roderick and the House of Usher. CD player on. Volume up. Lights out.