naturesdawn's Flickr photostream/Creative Commons

The burning of fossil fuels has been linked to around $120 billion dollars a year in health costs for the United States, largely as a result of premature deaths due to air pollution, according to new study from the National Academy of Sciences.

Revealing the hidden human cost of our dependency on coal and oil, eerily measured in dollars, will hopefully help motivate climate legislation both here and abroad, which will shift us to clean renewable energy sources, including wind and solar.

We need to drastically reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, and if the threat of a changing climate is not enough to help prioritize the issue for some people, perhaps the financial toll will help them spring into action.  Making the transition to a clean energy economy may require some steep investments initially, but the cost of developing those technologies and implementing the infrastructure will surely be minimal compared to price tag of fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels also create a host of other costs not examined by the study, including threats posed by a changing climate, environmental destruction, or health risks of water pollution created when coal plants attempt to clean their air emissions.

Use the action link below to find out what you can do to help us switch to 100% clean electricity and help fight the climate crisis.