Letter: Doctors Against Climate Catastrophe

The Guardian - Letters

‘The diagnosis is clear and the treatment urgent. Yet politicians prevaricate and global emissions still rise’ 

An Extinction Rebellion protest in Camden, London, earlier this month. Photograph: Ollie Millington/Getty Images 

We are qualified medical doctors united by our distress at the minimal response to looming environmental disaster. We sympathise with current widespread protest, notably by children who will be most affected. We urge government and media to respond immediately and proportionately.
As caring professionals we cannot countenance current policies that push the world’s most vulnerable towards environmental catastrophe. We are particularly alarmed by the effects of rising temperatures on health and heed predictions of societal collapse and consequent mass migration. Such collapse risks damage to physical and mental health on an unprecedented scale.
Present policies and responses are woefully inadequate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that we have only 11 years to halve global emissions to meet their 1.5C target, yet last year our global emissions rose yet again. It will be a massive task to avoid catastrophic warming and we need radical action now. Our unchecked consumption, dependence on fossil fuels and decimation of ecosystems continue. The diagnosis is clear and the treatment urgent. Yet politicians prevaricate and global emissions still rise.
Governments abrogate their responsibility when pursuing grossly inadequate policies that risk environmental collapse. Non-violent direct action then becomes the reasonable choice for responsible individuals.
We support the following key demands, which parallel those made by Extinction Rebellion:

• governments and media should be honest about the challenges and urgency of tackling ecological disaster;
• governments should effect carbon neutrality within the IPCC timeframe;
• governments should establish and be led by Citizens’ Assemblies to enable climate and ecological justice.

Signatories

• James Underwood
  Past president, Royal College of Pathologists


• Professor John Middleton
  President, UK Faculty of Public Health


• Professor David Pencheon
  Honorary professor of health and sustainable development, University of Exeter, UK


• Dr Bing Jones
  Retired associate specialist in haematology


• Dr Terry Kemple
  Past president, Royal College of General Practitioners

Links

• Letter in Full: The Cancer of Climate Change
• Doctors call for nonviolent direct action over climate crisis
• Climate Crisis Seriously Damaging Human Health, Report Finds
• Strengthen Health Systems To Cope With Climate Change Challenges
• Doctors Warn Australian Health System Not Prepared For Climate Change
• Australian Doctors Declare A Climate Emergency
• Why Fear And Anger Are Rational Responses To Climate Change
• Climate Change Will Expose Half Of World’s Population To Disease-Spreading Mosquitoes By 2050
• Climate Change And The Risk To Civilisation: The Doctors' Prescription
• Save Millions Of Lives By Tackling Climate Change, Says WHO
• The Climate Apocalypse Is Now, And It’s Happening To You
• Climate Change Already A Health Emergency, Say Experts