Thursday, October 31, 2019

Greenies are coming for your inhaler. No, really. They are.

You know what's wrong with having a big government that decides everything?

Fashion.

Not just hemlines, ladies. Fashionable theories, fashionable causes, these things sweep through institutions like the flu, infecting everyone and changing policy directions on a dime.

Case in point, greenhouse gases. Its the latest fashion in government. In Canada we have a carbon tax and we're not building any pipelines, thereby ruining our own economy.

In England the National Health Service is going vegan and taking away people's asthma inhalers.

Asthma carbon footprint 'as big as eating meat'

Making the swap would have as big an "eco" impact as turning vegetarian or becoming an avid recycler, they say.
It's because some inhalers release greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
There are more than five million people with asthma in the UK.
The research looked at the environmental impact of different inhaler medications prescribed to patients on the NHS in England.
In 2017, about 50 million inhalers were prescribed. Seven out of every 10 of them were metered-dose inhalers - the type that contain greenhouse gases.
The gas - hydrofluoroalkane - is used as a propellant to squirt the medicine out of the inhaler.
Metered-dose inhalers account for nearly 4% of NHS greenhouse gas emissions, according to experts.

So they're going to be switching people to non-propellant inhalers to save the planet. Being a government institution, they will have targets and quotas for numbers switched to the LESS EFFECTIVE dry powder version.

Sounds great, right?

Update: Welcome Instapundit! Thanks for the linkage, Sarah Hoyt!

Upperdate: Welcome all you Small Dead Animals and flying monkeys! Thanks for the linkage Kate! 

5 comments:

Joe in PNG said...

Orwell was wrong. The future is not a boot stamping on a human face forever, but a smothering nanny "just doing what's best for you, dear".

The Phantom said...

I think Orwell gave them too much credit, frankly. They don't seem to be that smart. I think they'd all -like- to be Big Brother, but they aren't clever enough to make it work.

Zsuzsa said...

Joe,

And remembering some of the times when I've really needed my inhaler, that "smothering" may be all too literal...

MarkJ1957 said...

Captain Obvious asks the musical question, "How many of those Brits with asthma d'ya suppose are lefties?"

Juan Paxety said...

Obama used a Bush era treaty to ban effective asthma medications in 2009. The replacements are not as effective and cost much, much more. People have died as a result. The greens are as cruel as their Marxist forefathers.