Climate change and health (The Lancet) UK

Link: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)60931X/abstract Please see link above for original abstract and directions how to get full article.

Tackling climate change: the greatest opportunity for global health Helena Wang Richard Horton Published: 22 June 2015 Commission Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health Nick Watts, W Neil Adger, Paolo Agnolucci, Jason Blackstock, Peter Byass, Wenjia Cai, Sarah Chaytor, Tim Colbourn, Mat Collins, Adam Cooper, Peter M Cox, Joanna Depledge, Paul Drummond, Paul Ekins, Victor Galaz, Delia Grace, Hilary Graham, Michael Grubb, Andy Haines, Ian Hamilton, Alasdair Hunter, Xujia Jiang, Moxuan Li, Ilan Kelman, Lu Liang, Melissa Lott, Robert Lowe, Yong Luo, Georgina Mace, Mark Maslin, Maria Nilsson, Tadj Oreszczyn, Steve Pye, Tara Quinn, My Svensdotter, Sergey Venevsky, Koko Warner, Bing Xu, Jun Yang, Yongyuan Yin, Chaoqing Yu, Qiang Zhang, Peng Gong, Hugh Montgomery, Anthony Costello “Tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century.”1 This finding, the central message of the second Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change, attempts to answer the stark conclusion of the first Lancet Climate Change Commission, published in 2009—namely, that “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.”2 This report by so many scientists does not put their claims of doom and gloom about “man- made climate change” in perspective with the real menaces for civilization, nature and the environment: pollution, poverty, corrupt governments, tendency to make the extreme 1 or 2 percent rich get richer while neglecting or paying only lip service to the extreme poor, poor, and lower middle classes, lack of affordable health care, lack of education for all but the very well off, etc.

John Shanahan President of Environmentalists for Nuclear – USA, website: efn-usa.org.

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Link: http://thelancet.com/infographics/climate-and-health Please see link above for original article, embedded hotlinks and comments.

Climate change and health The links between climate change and public health are increasingly clear. The Lancet Countdown 2017 report monitors the health impacts of climate change and the benefits resulting from the response to climate change.

The Lancet Countdown tracks progress on health and climate change and provides an independent assessment of the health effects of climate change, the implementation of the Paris Agreement,1 and the health implications of these actions. It follows on from the work of the 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change,2 which concluded that anthropogenic climate change threatens to undermine the past 50 years of gains in public health, and conversely, that a comprehensive response to climate change could be “the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century�.

Published October 30, 2017

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Link: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/science/ct-climate-changereport-20171030-story.html Please see link above for original article, embedded hotlinks and comments.

Climate change fueling disasters, disease in 'potentially irreversible' ways, report warns Ben Guarino and Brady Dennis Washington Post October 30, 2017 Climate change significantly imperils public health globally, according to a new report that chronicles the many hazards and symptoms already being seen. The authors describe its manifestations as "unequivocal and potentially irreversible."

Heat waves are striking more people, disease-carrying mosquitoes are spreading and weather disasters are becoming more common, the authors note in the report published Monday by the British medical journal the Lancet. Climate change is a "threat multiplier," they write, and its blows hit hardest in the most vulnerable communities, where people are suffering from poverty, water scarcity, inadequate housing or other crises.

"We've been quite shocked and surprised by some of the results," said Nick Watts, a fellow at University College London's Institute for Global Health and executive director of the Lancet Countdown, a project aimed at examining the links between climate change and public health.

The effort involved 63 researchers from two dozen institutions worldwide, including climate scientists as well as ecologists, geographers, economists, engineers, mathematicians, political scientists and experts who study food, transportation and energy.

It is the latest in several Lancet reports to focus on climate change. In 2009, a Lancet commission described climate change as "the biggest global health threat of the 21st century." In 2015, a second commission recognized that the innovations required to match this threat represented "the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century."

The Countdown, as its ticking-clock title suggests, outlines the way humans are adapting — or not — to a rapidly evolving climate. It was announced last year during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Morocco. The project, a synthesis of scientific literature and media reports, tracks 40 indicators of human health: migration, nutrition and air pollution.

Given the profound health dangers posed by a warming climate, the study's authors focused on a key question: How well is the world responding?

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"The answer is, most of our indicators are headed in the wrong direction," Watts said. "Broadly, the world has not responded to climate change, and that lack of response has put lives at risk. ...

The impacts we're experiencing today are already pretty bad. The things we're talking about in the future are potentially catastrophic."

Hotter global temperatures are exacting a human toll. Although the increase since 2000 may seem slight — about 0.75 degrees Fahrenheit — the planet is not a uniform oven. Local spikes can be dramatic and dangerous. Heat waves, defined as extreme temperatures that persist for at least three days, are on the rise.

Between 2000 and 2016, the number of people exposed to heat waves climbed by 125 million vulnerable adults, according to the report. During 2015, the worst year on record, 175 million people suffered through sweltering temperatures.

Watts also cited the rising number of deaths from floods, storms and other weather disasters.

Each year between 2007 and 2016, the world saw an average of 300 weather disasters — a 46 percent increase from the decade between 1990 and 1999. In the 25 years since 1990, these disasters claimed more than 500,000 lives.

And in recent years, the ranks of climate change migrants have grown. Just in the United States, more than 3,500 Alaskans have fled coastal erosion and permafrost melts. Twenty-five homes have been abandoned on Louisiana's Isle de Jean Charles, which is being overtaken by the Gulf of Mexico. In 2016, its former residents became the first to receive federal funds for a climate change retreat.

"If governments and the global health community do not learn from the past experiences of HIV/AIDS and the recent outbreaks of Ebola and Zika viruses," the authors warn in the paper, "another slow response will result in an irreversible and unacceptable cost to human health."

But Monday's report also finds "glimmers of hope," Watts said. For example, many countries are moving away from coal-fired power plants, which are a source both of carbon emissions that fuel global warming and pollution that can cause immediate health problems in nearby communities.

After the announcement in June that the United States would pull out of the Paris climate accord, the global response to climate change has been heartening, the authors write, "affirming clear political will and ambition to reach the treaty's targets." Nicaragua, previously a holdout because it said the treaty was not stringent enough, is set to join the Paris agreement, leaving only Syria and the United States opposed.

Watts and his co-authors note the ways people are trying to cope with the effects of climate change - spending less time outdoors, for example - even as they warn that the world cannot rely on adaptation alone.

"If anybody says we can adapt our way out of this, the answer is, of course you can't," he said.

"Some of the changes we're talking about are so enormous, you can't adapt your way out."

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