Environment: The climate crisis is a health crisis
Trust us, we’re doctors
About 10 years ago I was reading a research paper in a café near Sydney University and I dropped it on the floor. A young chap who was clearly a student picked it up, handed it back to me and asked, “What’s it about?”. “The effects of climate change on health”, I explained. “Really, how will climate change affect people’s health?’.
I think it’s considerably less likely that people would be puzzled by the association these days, but many might struggle to list and explain the multitude of ways in which we now have evidence that climate change is disastrous for people’s health, including causing an additional quarter of a million deaths per year worldwide within a decade. Two recent publications provide very readable overviews.
‘Fossil fuels are a health hazard’, produced by Doctors for the Environment Australia, focuses on four of the mechanisms by which coal, oil and gas harm health and cause premature death:
- Climate change damages human health in myriad ways so the DEA focuses on extreme heat, which kills more Australians than any other climate disaster, and mental health.
- Air pollution from fossil fuels kills 5-10 million people per year. There are many sources: e.g., mining, transporting and burning coal; processing oil and gas; burning gas in the home; transport-related air pollution; and bushfire smoke.
- Plastics, almost wholly produced from oil and gas, have an enormous carbon footprint and generate microplastics and health-damaging chemicals.
- Loss of biodiversity, exacerbated by climate change, reduces crop yields and water quality, increases the likelihood of new infectious diseases emerging, and reduces nature’s pool of sources of new pharmaceuticals.
As well as the effects on individuals, the added illnesses and accidents also add to the work of already stretched health systems.
Although the text focuses on a few specific health problems, the report also includes a useful diagrammatic summary of the various routes through which fossil fuels adversely affect human health.
The DEA prescribes “treatment plans” for government, the private sector and individuals. While the recommended therapies are sensible, indeed absolutely necessary, the majority have been recommended many times before and ignored by those who could initiate treatment. So, it’s not surprising that the Earth’s health continues to deteriorate and the prognosis is poor.
Children are one of the groups identified as highly vulnerable to climate change by the DEA and they are the subject of a recent UNICEF report.
The climate crisis is a child rights crisis
“A threat to progress. Confronting the effects of climate change on child health and well-being” emphasises, with examples and data, that the health of children, right through from the ante- and post-natal periods to adolescence, is uniquely vulnerable to the environmental consequences of climate change: extreme heat, droughts, wildfires, floods and storms, air pollution and ecosystem changes (examples below).
In part, this vulnerability is due to their physical, physiological and behavioural immaturity and their dependence on others. But, crucially, the report highlights some of the factors at play beyond individual children and their immediate families. In particular, social and physical environments have a strong influence on a child’s exposure to climate-related hazards, the severity of harm suffered and her/his capacity to cope and recover. Attention is directed towards five “multipliers” (water scarcity and contamination, food insecurity and contamination, infrastructural damage, service disruption and displacement), socioeconomic status, gender, location, and country context.
The report has assessed the number of children exposed to climate and environmental hazards using a new Children’s Climate Risk Index. One billion, almost half of the world’s children, live in extremely high-risk countries.
Once again, the recommendations mostly follow well-worn tracks to urgent mitigation and scaled-up adaptation: e.g., rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by wealthy countries to keep warming below 1.5oC, support to low-income countries for their energy transition, early warning and alert systems, better surveillance and data.
The need to prioritise child health in tackling climate change is, however, never lost, with emphasis given to the protection of children from indoor air pollution caused by cooking on open fires, climate education programs in schools, making primary health care the cornerstone of health systems (how often has that recommendation fallen on deaf ears over the last 50 years!) and rapid access to social protection and health and education services after a climate shock.
My one criticism of the report is that the analysis of the causes of children’s vulnerability to climate change and the scope of the recommendations are well-informed and wide-ranging, but the authors have failed to utilise complex systems thinking to develop a better understanding of the inter-relationships and what might be done to avoid the failure of similar reports to achieve the changes required.
Canada’s devastating forest fires
The widespread and extreme Canadian wildfires of 2023 caused millions of dollars of property damage, forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes and caused dreadful, health-damaging air pollution over vast areas of North America and even Europe and China. Unusually hot temperatures and unusually low precipitation, both associated with climate change, contributed to the duration and severity of the fires. The extreme weather conditions were exceptional by current standards, but are likely to be typical in 2050.
The fires burnt 7.8 million hectares of forest (six times Canada’s average during the 21st century) and accounted for a quarter of all tree lost globally last year.
Grey: Global tree loss. Red: Tree loss due to wildfires in Canada
The fires released three billion tons of CO2 – this is six times Australia’s total annual emissions and would rank the fires fourth in the list of country emissions after China (14 billion tons), US (6 billion) and India (4 billion). Unlike tropical deforestation which is due to changes in land use and is permanent, the forests lost in the Canadian fires will regrow and reabsorb the CO2, but only over many decades and provided the same areas aren’t subject to repeated wildfires.
In a final ridiculous twist of the administrative pen, not all the fires’ emissions need to be included in Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions report for 2023. The UN’s guidelines for reporting GHG emissions allows countries to designate some of their land “unmanaged”, meaning it is not influenced by humans and not relevant to the Paris Agreement which relates only to human-induced emissions. Canada designates about 30% of its land as “unmanaged”. So, we can all rest easy, there’s no need to worry about the billions of tons of CO2 released accelerating global warming as the pollies have arbitrarily decided that humans played no part in their production. I’m not sure that the laws of physics take what pollies think too seriously. Crazy, eh?
Gas not a fossil fuel
The NT’s Country Liberal Party galloped to a runaway victory in last weekend’s election with commitments to reduce crime, restore the Territory’s lifestyle and rebuild the economy. Promising to “play to our natural strengths” and use ‘Territory gas to grow the Territory economy”, the CLP claims “gas is the cleaner and cheaper pathway to renewables”, regrettably nothing new in that sort of political and industry rhetoric. The CLP seems to be rewriting the geological sciences though with this claim (page 16): “The gas from the Beetaloo is cleaner than fossil fuels”.
Most emission reduction policies have failed
A study reported in Science examined the effectiveness of 1,500 greenhouse gas emission reduction policies (for instance, carbon pricing, emissions trading schemes, regulations and standards, and removal of subsidies) implemented in 41 countries (responsible for 80% of current emissions) between 1998 and 2022. The policies covered the buildings, electricity, industry and transport sectors.
The good news is that there has been a steady increase in the average number of policies implemented per country between 1998 and 2002, although the industry sector has stalled recently.
The bad news is that most were ineffective. Only 63 (4%) achieved emissions reduction of at least 4.5%. Among the policies that achieved this minimum, the average reduction was 19%, or around 1 gigatonne of CO2 per year.
Apart from the shocking success rate, the most useful findings concern the characteristics of the successful policies:
- The successful interventions mostly involved two or more policies working together.
- Successful policy mixes varied by sector and country, particularly the country’s level of economic development.
- Carbon prices are not THE solution but they are a crucial part of the mix.
It’s important to note that 96% of the implemented policies were to all intents and purposes a waste of time and money, unless of course the intent was not to reduce emissions but to make it look as though one was trying to reduce emissions.
John Quiggin has provided a more detailed summary which I strongly recommend.
UNICEF: ‘Every child has the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment’
‘The [report’s] recommendations focus on what is needed to protect the survival, health and well-being of children from climate-related hazards. Unless mitigation efforts are accelerated and adaptation efforts are scaled up urgently, current and future generations of children will continue to bear the brunt as climate change affects their survival, and lifelong health and well-being. To this end, the world must work together.’
Bangladesh 2023
Malawi 2024
