Climate Change and Human Health

PrintEmail

A new report in the medical journal The Lancet warns that “climate change is the biggest global health threat in the 21st century.”  Researchers from the University College London, UK, and The Lancet have collaborated in a year-long study to produce the report with the overall message that climate change is not just an environmental issue, but will affect global public health through changing patterns of disease, water and food insecurity, vulnerable shelter and human settlements, extreme climatic events, and population growth and migration.
 
Sounds pretty grim and daunting, and because it's unproven there are likely to be many skeptics. But the authors of the report offer many policy solutions to go along with their assessment of the threats and challenges to climate change, and our ability to cope with it.
 
The adverse effects on human health via climate change will be felt by most populations within the next decades, they predict. Many would say we are already experiencing a negative impact -- from hurricanes and flooding in the Midwest, to tsunamis in Southeast Asia, and the earthquake in 2008 that devistated the Sichuan province in China. Remember the 2003 heat wave in France that killed upwards of 70,000?
 
Human contributions to climate change are widely accepted, but the amount of change, and our willingness and ability to mitigate it, are subject to much debate and controversy. The report commission calls for a new “advocacy and public health movement” that frames the threat of climate change for humankind as a health issue.
 
Five critical challenges to dealing with climate change were identified in the report, requiring cooperation among politicians, civil servants, scientists, health professionals and the general public:
 
1. Information gap: there is an “astonishing lack of knowledge about how we should respond to the negative health effects of climate change."
 
2. Health system inadequacies: the effects of climate change will hit the poor hardest and we need to find way to protect people in countries (and living environments) most at risk.
 
3. Technology challenge: We need greater investments into climate change science, and a better understanding of how to deliver those technologies to people in need.
 
4. Political challenge: How can we create the conditions for low-carbon living that is widely adopted and tenable?  Fortunately President Obama is prioritizing climate change by investing in renewable sources of energy, creating “green” jobs, pledging to reduce oil imports, and importantly, selecting Nobel prize-winning physicist, Steven Chu as energy secretary.
 
5. Institutional change:  How to adapt institutions to make climate change the priority it needs to be.
 
The Solution:  The authors suggest “An integrated approach to attempting to reduce the adverse effects of climate change requires at least three levels of action. First, policies must be adopted to reduce carbon emissions, and thereby slow down global warming and eventually stabilise temperatures. Second, action must be taken on the links connecting climate change and adverse health. Third, appropriate public health systems should be put into place to deal with adverse outcomes.”
 
Each of us is part of the solution to reducing carbon emissions and helping to slow the effects of climate change. Reusable bags for groceries, buying local foods, replacing lightbulbs, recycling, using “green” building materials, etc. are all steps we can take on a personal level.
 
Even at work you can suggest changes your company could make a to reduce their carbon footprint. Show by example and it will impact those around you. As Gandhi once said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”