Sometimes, in an effort to attract viewers/hits/attention/whatever, professional journalists write headlines that make little problems seem big and ignore the bigger problems.
Recently, CBS published a story online about GHG emissions from inhalers that people use to treat asthma and other respiratory problems. Referencing an article from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), CBS' headline was, "Inhalers produce as much carbon emissions as over 500,000 cars per year, study finds"
Wow! That's a lot! That's concerning!! Someone should do something about that!!! We should take away all of those inhalers from those sick people who are using them and give them something else to use so that we can save the environment!!!!!
Oh geez! Please stop!
This always comes up every couple of years and diverts attention away from controlling/reducing the major sources of CO2 equivalent by focusing on what, in reality, are trivial emissions on a worldwide scale.
According to the CBS/Jama report, inhalers in the USA produced about 24.9 MILLION metric tonnes of CO2e TOTAL over 10 years. That's an average of 2.49 million tonnes per year.
HOWEVER, total CO2e emissions in the USA are around 4.8 BILLION metric tonnes per ONE year! (Ref: Statista )
If these numbers are correct, that means inhalers contribute only 0.05% of total CO2e emissions. In other words, less than 1 tenth of a percent comes from inhalers and they're worried about them and not all of the major sources of greenhouse gases (GHG)?
Are you kidding me?
You could eliminate all of the inhalers in the world and it wouldn't make a dent in reducing global warming!
It's nonsense like this that prevents progress from being made to reduce emissions from significant sources of GHG.
