WE have a new and vigilant watchdog in our household. Its remit is not complicated: it reads the amount of electricity and gas we are burning to keep our home both warm and lit, as well as power the numerous appliances scattered around its rooms. In short, it watches over our fossil fuel use. The watchdog’s name is smart meter.

As soon as the smart meter appeared on the scene strange things began to happen. Suddenly we could tell how much energy we were using on an hour by hour basis and its cost. Almost at once our collective behaviour began to change. Instead of leaving lights burning in unoccupied rooms we began to switch them off and watch the numbers go down on our faithful watchdog’s face. Next we started half-filling the kettle for a couple of mugs of tea rather than wasting energy on boiling water destined to go cold again.

Within a few days we bumped into our next door neighbour and she remarked that our house had gone dark over the last few evenings.

The dramatic effect of a smart meter on one household in York got me thinking about the cost of our species’ wasteful and profligate approach to energy use on a global basis. Because the question is literally one of life and death.

York Press:

Columnist Tim Murgatroyd has a new watchdog at home - a smart meter

A landmark study by the Commission on Pollution and Health, recently published in the Lancet, revealed pollution kills at least nine million people and costs trillions of dollars every year. This major piece of research goes on to warn that the crisis “threatens the continuing survival of human societies”.

The report also stated air pollution, poisoned water and soils, and toxic workplaces cause diseases that kill one in every six people around the world. However, the scientists warned such figures were probably an underestimate, as there has been insufficient research to understand the impact of many pollutants. If you add together all deaths attributed to Aids, malaria and tuberculosis, pollution turns out to kill three times more than that number.

According to Professor Philip Landrigan, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, US, who co-led the commission, scientists are still discovering links between pollution and ill health, such as the connection between air pollution and dementia, diabetes and kidney disease.

When such links can be proven (as seems all too probable), the cause of many of the funding crises we face as a society may become uncomfortably clear. Take dementia. Anyone who has lost a loved elderly relative to this condition knows the tragic cost to both the individual affected and his or her family. From society’s perspective, the cost of the social care required by our current dementia epidemic is huge and spiralling.

And the same applies to many conditions linked to pollution.

By that reckoning, investing in cleaner energy now is a gift that will keep on giving. Professor Landrigan’s research estimates the welfare losses from pollution at $4.6tn a year (equivalent to more than six per cent of global GDP): “We always hear ‘we can’t afford to clean up pollution’ – I say we can’t afford not to clean it up.”

It is as though we find ourselves in a terrible, wasteful world war. Yet humanity’s enemy is humanity itself. Or, at least, our irrational, self-destructive tendencies.

So much doom and gloom can inevitably bring on feelings of pessimism. However, there have been major improvements in how developed nations deal with pollution in recent decades, even if we have not gone far enough. The whole question is one of political will.

I would also argue that it is in everyone’s interests for rich nations like the UK to help poorer nations develop renewable energy sources to cut down our global fossil fuel habit.

As York prepares its Local Plan I sincerely hope reducing pollution will be high on the agenda. The installation of a humble smart meter showed our household that change is possible when we become aware of the sheer scale of energy waste so many of us take for granted. Now is the time for local, national and world accords matched by action to detoxify the planet and save lives.