Climate change poses the biggest threat to human health in the 21st century but its full impact is not being grasped by the healthcare community or policymakers.
This report, compiled by a commission of academics from University College London and published in The Lancet, warns that climate change risks huge death tolls caused by disease, food and water shortages and poor sanitation.
The authors said that the NHS would face serious incremental pressures from heat and hygiene-related illnesses because of increasingly hot summers, greater pathogen spread with warmer temperatures, and the heightened risk of flooding.
Professor Anthony Costello, said that he had not realized the full ramifications of climate change on health until 18 months ago.
Describing the threat as a "clear and present danger" that would affect billions of lives, he said that the world needed a 21st-century public health movement to deal with climate change. He added that failure to act will result in future generations feeling the same moral outrage as is felt today towards those "who brought in and did nothing to stop slavery".
I've only gotten through the executive summary of the study so far, but this is a very insightful and comprehensive paper. This will have heavy implications for climate change adaptation and mitigation financing, especially in the developing world who will bear the brunt of global climate change. I read somewhere that along the India-Bangladesh border, Indian officials are putting up razor wire fences in anticipation of climate refugees attempting to flee Bangladesh.
I am meeting with some USAID officials on Friday to talk about shifting their climate adaptation funding into the public health funding, and this paper came out just in time to get me some credible arguments beyond my own BA in philosophy.
Full paper
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