 |
| (AP Photo/Omar Havana) |
The latest MJA-Lancet Countdown report tracking progress on health and climate change in Australia shows dangerous heat exposure has risen by 37% in the past 20 years.
The 2025 edition has revealed that while Australia’s dangerous heat exposure has escalated in the past two decades, the country now has the second-highest number of climate change cases globally.
Lead author and Macquarie University Professor Paul Beggs said Australia’s health-damaging heat “substantially” increased in frequency since the 1970s.
“Courts have closely examined detailed evidence about how climate change directly and indirectly affects people’s health, especially for vulnerable groups,” Beggs said.
“Health was raised as an issue in eleven Australian climate cases between 2014 and 2023.”
The Countdown report was first published in 2017. It provides an annual assessment of connections between health and climate change in Australia and New Zealand across the domains of health hazards and impacts; adaptation planning; mitigation actions; economics and finance; and public and political engagement.
In 2021, Australia’s health care sector produced greenhouse gas emissions that rose to their highest level in a decade. The report concluded this was likely attributed in part to the ways care patterns shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other concerning trends identified in the report include a diminishing capacity to respond to bushfires, with the number of volunteer firefighters dropping by 17% over the past seven years, and the dominance of fossil fuels in the domestic energy supply contributing to climate risks.
Professor Beggs, who is also Lancet Countdown Centre Oceania director, added because of Australia’s particular exposures, long-term tracking for climate hazards was crucial.
ANU’s Professor Hilary Bambrick, National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health director, lauded recent government efforts to deal with “priority risks” via the national climate risk assessment.
“This past year Australia has taken a crucial step forward in understanding how risks are connected across sectors,” Bambrick said.
“This assessment should facilitate more considered and coordinated planning and response to increasingly dangerous climate change to better protect human health and wellbeing.”
The assessment also highlighted Australia’s progress in shifting to renewables, noting renewable energy sources provided nearly 40% of domestic electricity needs.
Renewable storage and generation of large-scale and small-scale kinds are also growing.
Paper co-author Professor Stefan Trueck, who is the director of Macquarie University’s Centre for Transforming Energy Markets, noted that more funding is needed to realise renewables’ potential.
“Electricity generation from renewables keeps accelerating, fossil fuel generation is shrinking, but ensuring reliability of electricity supply demands even greater investment in renewables and storage,” he said.
The Countdown report was published in the Medical Journal of Australia.
Links- The 2024 report of the MJA–Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: Australia emerging as a hotspot for litigation
- Australian and Pacific Climate Change Litigation
- Climate litigation is on the rise around the world and Australia is at the head of the pack
- Legal briefing - Recent trends in climate change litigation
- Managing climate risk: Insights from global legal trends and government initiatives
- Global Climate Litigation Report: 2023 Status Review
No comments :
Post a Comment