Health Arguments for Climate Change
The health impact of climate change is a critical issue that policy-makers should be aware of while setting priorities for action and investment to mitigate the impact of global climate change. World Health Organisation WHO experts delivered this urgent message at this years Global Warming Risks, Challenges and Decisions conference in Copenhagen.
The Tree Badger has released a dirty great stonker of a video using footage from WoW and the background track of "Around the World" by Daft Funk that follows a WoW Machinima discovering global warming, which draws a parallel between what is happening on Earth and how this is visually reflected in Azeroth.
WHO has identified three key health arguments for stronger climate change measures:
Climate change has adverse consequences for health: as carbon goes up health goes down
Along with WHO the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and data identify risks to human health as a serious signal of the consequences of climate change and global warming of earth's natural processes. Health hazards from climate change are diverse, global and difficult to reverse over human time scales. The effects of global warming hits those least responsible for causing it They range from increased risks of extreme weather events, to effects on infectious disease dynamics and sea level rise leading to salinization of land and water sources.
Reducing green house gases emissions can be beneficial to health:
As carbon goes down health goes up
Feasible improvements in environmental conditions could reduce the global disease burden by more than 25%. A large part is linked to energy consumption and transport systems. Changing these systems to reduce climate change would have the added benefit of addressing some major public health issues, including outdoor air pollution (750 000 fatal each year); road accidents (over a million annual deaths) and physical inactivity and indoor air pollution which top 3 million deaths per year.
Based on WHO estimates around 150,000 deaths now occur in low-income countries each year due to climate change from four climate-sensitive health outcomes - crop failure and malnutrition, diarrhoeal disease, malaria and flooding.
Effective response requires global action
The health impacts of climate change are felt unequally. Whether it's excess deaths from the heat wave in Europe, or malarial deaths in central Africa, the people at greatest risk for climate-related health disorders and premature deaths are the poor, the geographically vulnerable, the very young, women and the elderly.The populations considered to be at greatest risk are those living in small island developing states, mountainous regions, water-stressed areas, megacities and coastal areas in developing countries (particularly the large urban agglomerations in delta regions in Asia), and also poor people and those lacking access to health services.
Putting these three health arguments at the center of discussions at the forthcoming Conference of the Parties (COP-15) in Copenhagen later this year would ensure that in the new post-Kyoto agreement we will all share in the health and economic benefits that can accrue from countering climate change.
WHO will strive to achieve four objectives:
- raising global awareness of these health arguments
- making the health case for strong greenhouse gas reductions (mitigation) in all sectors (e.g., transport, housing, energy, agriculture) at national, regional and international levels
- promoting and supporting the generation of scientific evidence
- and strengthening health systems to cope with the health threat posed by climate change, including emergencies related to extreme weather events and sea-level rise.
