Last week, the
Paris climate agreement
officially entered into force, with the landmark global climate deal
ushering in a new era of international climate diplomacy and sustainable
development. This week, delegates from over 190 nations are convening
in Morocco, seeking to build on the spirit of cooperation born in Paris,
and working to convert the broad aspirational commitments into action.
While building on the architecture of the Paris agreement, national
governments should keep the public health implications in mind.
Climate change
is now recognised in the medical field as a clear and present danger to
public health. The World Health Organisation’s director general has
called it “one of the greatest health risks of the 21st century,” and
the 2015 Lancet Commission concluded that climate change poses “an
unacceptably high and potentially catastrophic risk to human health.”
In Australia, where I studied medicine, these risks are already all
too clear. This week, the Lancet, one of the world’s most prestigious
medical journals, is launching a new research collaboration dedicated to
tracking these risks in Australia and around the world. The Lancet
Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change, will check in
annually on countries’ progress on climate change and calculate the
direct health impacts of the transition to a low carbon future.
The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP), meanwhile, is
also releasing three position statements on health and climate change.
These statements are informed by some dire observations.
Over the past half-century, average temperatures across the continent
have steadily increased, bringing more frequent heatwaves that are
longer and hotter than any in recorded history. Exposure to high
temperatures over a prolonged period brings heightened rates of ailments
such as dehydration, heat exhaustion, and heatstroke, and worsens
existing health conditions like heart and potentially even kidney
disease. These heatwaves have caused more deaths over the last century
in Australia than any other natural event. Tragically, children and the
elderly are most vulnerable.
The public health impacts, however, go well beyond heat-related
threats. Changes to precipitation patterns are causing both severe
droughts and intense floods, which together have taken the lives of
thousands. Over time, new rainfall norms and warmer temperatures are
expected to alter the burden and distribution of infectious disease
throughout Australia, as mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever
and the Ross River virus take hold.
Beyond these harms that warmer temperatures deliver, the combustion
of climate warming fossil fuels creates other direct threats to public
health. Air pollution from the burning of coal for electricity
generation and from road transport presents a particularly worrying
challenge, resulting in twice as many deaths as motor vehicle accidents
(over 3,000 per year).
In urban areas, smog from tailpipes contains ground-level ozone,
dangerous particulates, and other pollutants. Ozone irritates the lining
of the lungs and exacerbates asthma, and is actually made more potent
on hot, sunny days, which are anticipated to be more frequent as a
result of climate change. By 2050, ozone-induced hospitalisations in
Sydney are expected to double.
Despite all of these troubling statistics and predictions,
Australia’s government shows little interest in setting strong climate
goals and facilitating the transition away from coal. In fact, the
Australian delegation arrived at the COP22 climate talks without having
ratified the Paris agreement (
although it has since been ratified), and with some of the weakest greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets among all the participating nations.
Australia’s stated goal is to reduce net GHG emissions 26% below 2005
levels by 2030, a calculation that includes land use change and
reforestation on top of modest emissions reductions from the burning of
fossil fuels. The Climate Institute, an Australian think tank,
has reported
that under these current targets, Australia’s per capita emissions in
2030 would be twice as high as the average for other developed
countries.
Rather than explore ways to bring domestic policies in line with the
international community, Australia’s politicians seem more concerned
with protecting the coal industry and promising that the fossil fuel
will be part of Australia’s energy mix for
“many, many, many decades to come.”
By doing so, they are not only steering Australia to a hotter, more
dangerous, and less healthy future, but also cheating Australians out of
the positive co-benefits of transitioning away from coal and other
fossil fuels.
If the Turnbull government needs hard evidence of the health benefits
of climate action, they can consult the Lancet Countdown on Climate and
Health, which will put real world economic costs on the policy choices.
Between the Lancet Countdown and the RACP’s statements, it’s clear that
physicians and public health professionals understand the
climate-health nexus better than Australia’s politicians. Mr. Turnbull
should act for the health and wellbeing of all Australians.
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