Climate change threatens global health
A major new report produced by medical journal The Lancet and University College London (UCL) has said that climate change could turn back half a century of progress on improving global health – but that tackling climate change could also represent a golden opportunity to improve global health as the 21st Century progresses. Backed by the head of the UN World Health Organization, Margaret Chan, the collaborative report was developed by dozens of health experts from around the world, setting out the risks posed by heatwaves, floods and droughts, air pollution, famines, mental health, disease and other threats exacerbated by climate change.
“We see climate change as a major health issue and that is often neglected in the policy debates,” said Professor Anthony Costello, director of the UCL Institute of Global Health and co-chair of the joint Lancet-UCL initiative. “On our current trajectory, going to four degrees [of global warming] is somewhere we don’t want to go, and that has very serious and potentially catastrophic effects for human health and human survival and could undermine all of the last half-century’s gains. We see that as a medical emergency because the action we need to do to stop that in its tracks and get us back on to a [two-degree] trajectory or less requires action now – and action in the next 10 years – otherwise the game could be over.”
According to the report, the biggest barrier to introducing a low-carbon economy and mitigating the effects of climate change is political will – its authors also say that doctors and other health professionals must take a leading role in the fight against ‘powerful entrenched interests’ that seek to prolong humanity’s ‘addiction’ to fossil fuels. “A public health perspective has the potential to unite all actors behind a common cause – the health and well-being of our families, communities and countries,” the report states. “These concepts are far more tangible and visceral than tonnes of atmospheric CO2, and are understood and prioritised across all populations.”