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1 August 2025
By Elisabeth HIRTZ
Dear President of the Republic of Poland, Andrzej Duda,
As a former resident of Kraków, Poland, I felt a deep sense of injustice experiencing first-hand the health effects of the extreme air pollution as a child and teenager.
We must confront not only the long term consequences of greenhouse gas emissions but also the immediate and deadly health risks that it amplifies. There is a scientific consensus : the fossil fuels that are driving global warming are also a major source of fine particles polluting the air that your citizens breathe, while alternative sources show lower impacts on air pollution (Bhattarai et al., 2024; WHO, 2022; Zareba, 2025). Since 2021, the World Health Organization proposed an annual mean of 5 μg/m³ as a maximum healthy level of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) to protect public health (WHO, 2021). However, all Polish cities remain far above this threshold with annual mean concentrations ranging from 10 μg/m³ to 25 μg/m³ (EEA, 2024). The resulting public health crisis is severe, with PM2.5, NOX and O3 air pollution causing 9 million yearly premature deaths worldwide including over 47,000 in Poland alone, the highest number in the European Union (Fuller, 2022; Kupiec & Dariusz Jerzy Góra, 2024; Uwak et al., 2021).
The social costs of air-pollution currently amounts to nearly 10% of residents’ income in Poland (EPHA, 2020). While the costs of inaction are staggering, the economic and health benefits of mitigating air pollution outweigh mitigation costs, with benefit-to-cost ratios ranging from 1:4 to 2:45 (IPPC TS III, 2022; Markandya et al., 2018; Vandyk et al., 2018). Acting on this health-pollution nexus presents Poland with the dual opportunity to improve human and ecosystem health by addressing a shared source of their deterioration.
However, Poland’s policies fall short of its responsibility to tackle emissions and their pollution. While the Polish government pledged a 7% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 (compared to 2005 levels), the European Commission deemed its National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) insufficient as it relies on existing measures that are projected to fail at meeting the 2030 EU climate targets (European Commission, 2024). Poland’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP) also lacks an integrated mitigation strategy and has not been amended since 2013 (European Commission, 2021). Further, although coal accounted for 69% of Poland’s energy mix in 2022 (IEA, 2022; Eurostat, 2024), a full coal phase-out is not planned until 2049, a timeline incompatible with the urgency of the crisis (European Commission, 2024). The 2025 Climate Change Performance Index thus rates Poland “low” across all categories: emissions, renewables, energy use, and climate policy (CCPI, 2025).
President Duda, the path forward is clear: Poland must accelerate a rapid and fair phasing out of fossil fuels, invest in clean energy and energy-efficient buildings, and fully coordinate the implementation of EU environmental regulation (Holnicki et al., 2022; WHO, 2025). Air pollution is not an isolated environmental concern but a preventable health crisis and a solvable climate threat.
Diagnosis: Poland is Choking on Coal
Dear President of the Republic of Poland, Andrzej Duda,
A few years ago, in science class, I was told
That I smoked ten cigarettes on a day where it’s cold.
But don’t get me wrong, I was not an underage smoker
Nor is your country said to allow such a behavior.
I was a healthy girl living in the city of Krakow
Where in winter, the pollution peaks would backflow.
Recess breaks and sport classes were robbed from us children
By this invisible predator, making play forbidden.
Around me, I heard blaming and shaming,
“That pollution is from our neighbors!”
Yes, that air we share knows no borders,
But bringing solutions requires collaborating.
So allow me President, with honest force,
To point out truths that I cannot endorse:
With 69% of your energy still drawn from coal,
It’s time to completely rethink Poland’s role.
It’s been said, again and again
By the scientists and the leaders, in vain:
You must draw away from fossil fuels
And reduce emissions, abide by the rules.
The death toll of this silent invader is the highest in Poland.
Of all countries in Europe, you bear the worst brand.
Safe pollutant levels set by health organizations
Are exceeded by double, triple or quadruple in your nation.
Your national strategies for climate and energy
Are but an unfit set of measures, detached from reality:
Inefficient, outdated and focused on adaptation.
Listen to the EU’s call to a strong, strategic mitigation!
If I am to find a bright side to this bleak observation,
It’s that you could kill two birds with one stone from your nation:
If you act on your country’s polluting emissions,
You’ll improve both human’s and nature’s health conditions.
Inaction is more costly than immediate mitigation,
National pride more costly than bilateral cooperation.
A nation’s pride is not in coal
But in the care it shows its people.
Dear President,
Revert the diagnosis: clear the skies.
Let your people breathe and see them rise.
References
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