Climate Change Biggest Threat to Human Health
Global climate change is now the largest threat to human health, according to researchers on Thursday.
A team of medical experts from The Lancet journal and the Institute for Global Health at University College London reported that climate change is the biggest global threat of the 21st Century, as it poses risks of spreading deadly diseases and leading to massive food shortages and droughts.
Researchers said global warming would largely target poor underdeveloped nations, although they are among the lowest contributors of carbon emissions.
"The inequity of climate change – with the rich causing most of the problem and the poor initially suffering most of the consequences – will prove to be a source of historical shame to our generation if nothing is done to address it," said researchers.
A shift in weather patterns could lead to a larger concentration of disease-ridden mosquitoes as well as flooding in poor regions of the world, leading to cholera and other diseases.
"Estimates show that small increases in the risk for climate-sensitive conditions, such as diarrhea and malnutrition, could result in very large increases in the total disease burden," said researchers.
Climate change could result in serious threats to human health, including economic crises, pandemics, poverty, and violence and conflict.
“These problems will demand complex solutions,” experts wrote in an editorial in The Lancet. “But few organizations are able to bridge the widely differing domains and disciplines necessary to define ways to solve these unusually challenging human predicaments.”
"There are no institutions at the global level who can really deal effectively with devising complex solutions to these complex problems," said Lancet editor Dr. Richard Horton. "It is an urgent threat. It is a dangerous threat. It has been neglected, and requires an unprecedented response by governments and international organizations."
Experts said universities are “commonly neglected sources””and forces””for social change.” The new report serves as a wake-up call to professional communities.
"The medical profession has to wake up if we’re going to save billions of lives. This is why it’s in the Lancet – it is the only way to do this is working with medics and other professionals to get that message across," said Professor Mark Maslin, a UCL climatologist.
"Being a climatologist and jumping up and down pulling my hair out and saying ‘we’re all going to die in a horrible way’ does not work."
"Apart from a small dedicated band of researchers, I think the health lobby has come late to this debate, but there’s much that we can do to protect billions of people now and in the future," lead author Professor Anthony Costello from the Institute for Global Health, told BBC News.
"We especially want representation from poorer nations. This conference would set out some clear indicators, targets, and accountability mechanisms. We need a new 21st-century public health movement to deal with climate change," said Costello.
"We’ve got the set of priorities now. What we have to do is take them to every climate change conference, write about them, gather evidence and work to the summit in two years’ time – you really can use the science to change policy."
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