The Climate Crisis is a Health Crisis - Gregory Andrews

Lyrebird Dreaming - Gregory Andrews

Author Gregory Andrews is: Founder and Managing Director of Lyrebird Dreaming A former Australian Ambassador and High Commissioner in West Africa Australia’s first Threatened Species Commissioner A leader in Indigenous policy

Climate change is usually talked about as an environmental issue. 

Coral reefs, glaciers, bushfires and endangered species etc. All of that matters enormously. But it's also increasingly missing the point. 

The climate crisis is now fundamentally a public health emergency.

This week, a panel of leading international experts convened by the World Health Organization urged it to formally declare the climate crisis a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” - the same highest-level warning mechanism used for pandemics like COVID-19 and Mpox. And honestly, they’re right.

Because the climate crisis is no longer a distant future threat about penguins, polar bears and rising seas. It's already making people sick. It's already killing people. And it's already overwhelming health systems around the world.

• Heatwaves now kill thousands of people every year across Europe, India, North America and Australia.
• Smoke from bushfires triggers asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes.
• Floods contaminate water supplies and spread disease.
• Changing temperatures are expanding mosquito-borne illnesses like dengue fever into places that never previously had to deal with them. 
• And mental health impacts - from eco-anxiety to trauma after disasters - are rising rapidly.

 And then there’s the air pollution. The same fossil fuels driving climate change are also poisoning the air we breathe. 

According to the WHO, air pollution causes around 7 million premature deaths globally every year. Think about that for a moment. Governments like Australia's are effectively using taxpayers money to subsidise industries whose pollution contributes to millions of early deaths.

Despite claiming to take climate and health seriously, Australia still provides billions of dollars in fossil fuel subsidies every year - through fuel tax credits, exploration incentives and other support mechanisms. 

While hospitals struggle for funding and ambulance ramping statistics dominate news headlines, we're still underwriting the industries making us sick in the first place. It’s the political equivalent of subsidising cigarettes while warning people not to smoke!

The irony is that serious climate action would produce enormous public health benefits almost immediately:

• Cleaner air. 
• More walkable cities. 
• Better public transport. 
• Less heat stress. 
• More green space. 
• Lower rates of respiratory and cardiovascular disease. 
• Healthier diets. 
• More active lifestyles.

Climate action is not just about avoiding catastrophe in 2050. It’s about improving human health right now. This is also why the language matters. Calling the climate crisis an “environmental issue” subtly frames it as soft and optional - something to balance against “economic priorities”. 

But calling it what it is - a public health emergency - changes the conversation entirely. Because governments are supposed to respond to public health emergencies urgently. And public health is recognised as an economic priority.

When COVID hit, governments mobilised trillions of dollars, rewrote laws, held daily press conferences and transformed entire economies almost overnight. Yet climate action, which the WHO already describes as the "greatest health threat facing humanity", is still at best treated as another policy debate.

Part of the reason is psychological. Pandemics feel immediate and visible. The climate crisis is unfolding more slowly and unevenly. But the cumulative death toll from heat, smoke, pollution, hunger, disasters and disease will dwarf most modern pandemics if emissions continue unchecked. And unlike many health emergencies, this one is being knowingly fuelled. 

We understand the cause. We understand the consequences. And we already have many of the solutions. What’s missing is political courage.

Australia especially should understand this. We're already seeing worsening bushfires, floods, heatwaves and disease risks. Our health systems are increasingly exposed to climate shocks. Regional communities are on the frontline. And Aboriginal communities - who often contribute least to emissions - are disproportionately exposed to climate impacts, including threats to Country, food systems, housing and cultural wellbeing.

Yet instead of treating climate change like the public health emergency it is, our politics still treats fossil fuel expansion as economic common sense. Future generations will look back on this period with disbelief and anger. 

They will wonder how governments could simultaneously warn about climate danger while subsidising the industries causing it. They will wonder how we normalised mass pollution deaths. And they will wonder why we waited so long to call a public health emergency exactly what it was.

Because this isn't just an environmental crisis anymore. It’s a health crisis. And the emergency department's waiting room is already full.

Gregory Andrews Climate Change Articles

• The Science Is In: Global Warming Is Accelerating
• While We Watch Iran, the Planet Keeps Burning
• Have your say on Canberra’s next Climate Strategy: It will be make or break
• Science Warns of Future Where Billions Bake
• Two Years to 1.7°C: the “Prediction Game” We Can’t Afford to Lose
• Emergency Photos Ops Aren't Climate Leadership
• Why Fascists Reject Climate Science
• Don’t Be Distracted: Earth’s Life Support Systems Are Collapsing
• Diesel rebates for miners and a new EV tax? Australia’s climate policy double-think
• What Gas is That? Get to Know Your Climate Pollutants