Author Archive for cahaorg

Lots of prescriptions issued at Climate and Health Clinic

by cahaorg
March 1st, 2012

The Climate and Health Alliance along with Koowerup Regional Health Service recently initiated a Climate and Health Clinic – a two day event run as part of the Melbourne Sustainability Festival.

With the help of more than 20 fabulous volunteers, the Clinic offered ‘climate and health checks’ to hundreds of festival-goers, and those who wished to could have their own prescription for ‘climate and health’.

The prescriptions acted as a checklist to assist people identify actions that they could take in their own lives that would cut emissions and improve their own and/or population health at the same time.

Download Your Prescription for a Healthy Life and Healthy Planet – or even better, print some out and offer them to friends, family or patients.

The popup clinic idea and the prescriptions offer a great health promotion tool to use the health ‘frame’ to talk about climate change, and help raise awareness of the health benefits associated with cutting emissions – a WIN! WIN! situation.

Want to know more? View a couple of our videos from the event! What CAHA lacks in professional media resources, it makes up for in enthusiasm – so excuse the quality, but we hope you get the idea!

 

Categories Advocacy, Climate, Health, Uncategorized
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Where’s health at the COP?

by cahaorg
December 7th, 2011
In another post, I wrote about why health professionals should care about climate change. Luckily, it seems that I’m not the only one who’s thought of this- more than ever before, health professionals are present and engaging with the UN climate talks.
During this conference, there have been 6 official side events, two health-related actions, and numerous other informal and peer-to-peer education sessions. But are negotiators giving health the love which health professionals are giving to climate change?

Historically, involvement of health has been minimal. The original 1992 UNFCCC text has only two token mentions of health, the Kyoto Protocol has zero, and the Cancun Adaptation Framework has one – in a footnote. Negotiations for this year haven’t finished yet, but so far there hasn’t been significant progress in the inclusion of health.

This could cut both ways- health professionals have previously lacked meaningful engagement on climate change issues. But now so many things are happening to highlight that this isn’t the case.

There is now a large volume of high quality data that maps the many threats to human health and wellbeing that are posed by climate change; the World Health Organisation predicts that climate change is currently causing 150,000 deaths per year.

Each year, about 1.2 million people die from causes attributable to urban air pollution, 2.2 million from diarrhoea largely resulting from lack of access to clean water supply and sanitation, 3.5 million from malnutrition and approximately 60 000 in natural disasters. Climate change will exacerbate each of these existing disease burdens.

In addition, the health impacts will predominantly affect the poorest and most vulnerable worldwide – women and children, the elderly, and those living in extreme poverty- those who have contributed least to the causes of climate change.

Expanding our knowledge, however, is not enough. Unless a dramatic change in events occurs during the next 2 days, it is unlikely that the world will see a legally binding global deal before 2020. And the science now unequivocally tells us that this is too late to avoid catastrophic climate change. Therefore, as a global community we will need to increase our capacity to adapt to the changes which climate change will bring.

In this area, the health profession will be crucial. A lack of involvement of health professionals within adaptation programmes, particularly under the Adaptation Committee, could have wide reaching and devastating effects on population health. Additionally, health is a tangible concept, which communities and individuals are easily able to envisage. Therefore, the use of health indicators to measure the impacts of climate change could act as an urgently required impetus for action.

A lack of action by the negotiators at Durban would make it more, not less, important for health professionals to engage on climate change issues. It will be our patients who will be suffering the consequences in the years to come.

Maya Tickell-Painter is a fourth year medical student currently studying in Brighton, UK. She travelled to the COP 17 conference in Durban as a representative of Medsin, the UK student global health organisation. This blog first appeared on the Adopt-A-Negotiator website on 7th December 2011.

Categories Advocacy, Climate, Health
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COPping the heat (and the procrastination) in Durban

by cahaorg
December 3rd, 2011

By Fiona Armstrong

The beachside city of Durban is packed, with 10,000 people from 194 countries in town for the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to negotiate the next step in the process of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

It’s also the 7th meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP7), the mechanism through which the Protocol is implemented, and the central subject of this meeting, as nations wrestle with what arrangements can be put in place to replace or extend the agreements under the Protocol which expires in 2012.

The focus to date has been on drafting, negotiating and agreeing proposals for each country’s Ministers to use when they begin to negotiate the shape of the new commitments next week. There are concurrent discussions on the mitigation efforts agreed in Cancun last year, outstanding commitments from the Bali Action Plan of 2007, and intense discussions on both the volume and rate at which contributions to the Green Climate Fund are delivered to assist developing nations cut emissions and adapt to climate change.

Several countries, including Australia have put forward proposals for a new treaty that would provide for implementation of the Convention post 2012. Ideally, this would also cover the commitments being negotiated under the Long term Cooperative Action (LCA) plans begun at Cancun, which includes mitigation strategies by countries such as the US currently outside the Kyoto Protocol.

In a demonstration of negative peer influence, US recalcitrance is now being echoed by its northern neighbours, Canada, who earned themselves “fossil of the day” award on day one of the negotiations by indicating their intention to withdraw from the Protocol when it expires next year. This surprised no-one, as Canada has been falling short of their commitments for some time, but their hostility to the process was somewhat unprecedented, given the comments by the Canadian Environment Minister that signing Kyoto has been “one of the biggest blunders” ever made by their national government.

The glaring chasm in the discussions is the gap between stated commitments of countries to cut emissions and those recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report (and confirmed by more recent evaluations, such as the Australian Climate Commission’s Critical Decade report in May). (This ‘discrepancy’ was acknowledged in the Cancun Agreements, but subsequent indications of willingness to act and the negotiations here suggest there is a widespread delusional disorder among many nations that postponement will not carry profound risk and that delay due to poor political appetite is somehow justified).

Other issues being negotiated here include the establishment of common accounting methods for measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) of emissions reduction efforts, including international offsets. This is key to transparency and accountability, and a vital underpinning of any international agreement. There is much that is unknown about many of these commitments to date however (eg how emissions will be achieved, what gases will be covered, what accounting systems, and what sectors will be covered).

In the meantime, many nongovernment organisations (NGOs) are focussing on the kinds of climate change issues that affect the welfare of people – trade, markets, gender, global justice, finance, and health.

Health is receiving more attention than at previous COPs, with the largest ever health delegation to attend the international climate talks in Durban. There are scores of health organisations from more than 30 countries and dozens of health-related side events. Over 200 delegates will attend the Global Climate and Health Summit on Sunday where the establishment of a global climate and health coalition is proposed.

Mentions of health in the negotiating texts are few and far between however, but health NGOs are working hard here to encourage countries to embed health messages into the discussions and stated ambitions, by highlighting the serious and increasing risks to health from climate change, as well as the substantial and immediate benefits to health from strategies to reduce emissions.

Australia’s role appears more cooperative rather than at earlier meetings, and the delegation coasting on a bit of goodwill for getting some form of climate policy legislation passed. Questions are still being raised however about its role in holding out for a loophole in the rules for land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) which allows Australia log and burn native forests without having to account for the emissions this causes.

And there is no room for complacency in assuming the Clean Energy Future legislation is anywhere near enough for Australia to meet its obligations: a study out this week shows Australia needs to do much more to meet even its own 5% by 2020 target, much less the ambitious reductions required to keep warming stays below 2°C agreed to in Cancun, or the 1.5°C maximum sought by Pacific and some African nations.

Along with most other nations, Australia needs to substantially raise its ambition. This requires much stronger targets: its contribution to the global task of emissions reductions must be consistent with its emissions profile as well as a fair share of the global task – cognisant of the commitments already in place from other countries.

Its important to be aware that many other countries are meeting their (admittedly inadequate) Kyoto commitments and many are implementing climate policy: eleven other nations with whom Australia trades now have a price on carbon; fourteen have renewable energy targets; many more have policies such as emissions performance standards, feed-tariffs, and subsidies or incentives for energy efficiency or renewable energy technology. Despite having been hit by the eurozone crunch much harder than Australia, the UK, for example, is still committed to reductions of 50% by 2020. Global investment in renewable energy hit US$211 billion in 2010 and this despite the global economic downturn.

The key messages from NGOs here in Durban are that:

  • Australia’s current target is inadequate;
  • other countries are taking action;
  • strong domestic national policy is key to other countries taking action: and
  • there are important national benefits for emissions reductions that are available immediately.

But Australian officials need to do a better job both here in Durban and at home to create a compelling narrative for strong climate action. There are many ‘frames’ through which climate action can be positively viewed i.e. benefits to health, risk management, and low carbon market opportunities – all of which are real, and available right now.

The community must be made aware of the opportunities; and the consequences of further delay. And distortions of the science by those with vested interests must be exposed, as one presentation here today suggested for the “assault on humanity” that it is.
While many of the negotiations here are taking place behind closed doors, there is a vital role for observers in tracking progress and spreading the word on how the talks progress.

As these talks continue, I hope people back at home are following, and letting their representatives know that they expect a positive outcome. Time is short: very short, according to the recent International Energy Agency report.

Please don’t switch off, Australia – we’ll all COP it if you do.

This post also appears on Shaping Tomorrows World.

Categories Climate
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On the road to Durban and beyond

by cahaorg
November 28th, 2011

This post was written by Dr. Pendo Maro, Senior Climate Advisor for Health Care Without Harm Europe and the Health and Environment Alliance; Pendo will attend COP 17 in Durban. It was first published on the blog of Health Care Without Harm, a charity that promotes health care which does no harm to people or the environment.

I was in London on 17 October 2011 attending THE conference on health and security implications of climate change.  With over 300 delegates, the meeting brought together ‘soldiers and doctors’, scientists, politicians, business, industry, environmentalists and many others. This is a good indicator that joint efforts to raise awareness about health and climate change within the health sector have taken root. Even more exciting was the statement signed by many participants and many other concerned people calling the EU and other international leaders to take immediate action to address the health and security implications of climate change.

But, health representation both in terms of professionals and substance at international and local climate change debates, policies and outcomes remains poor. We are redressing this. We took a health delegation to the international climate change talks in Barcelona, Copenhagen and Cancun and will be going to Durban. The idea: make sure that health forms a cornerstone of climate change talks and ambitious, binding actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change. And bring the health voice forward. We are doing the same in Europe – work with other civil society groups to advocate for health in the European institutions and in EU member states. Things are moving, albeit slowly.

So why the fuss? Well, climate change is bad for your health. That’s putting it simply. For starters, the health impacts of climate change are generally known. Yes, science has shown that health impacts include increasing burden of malnutrition, cardiovascular disease, mortality and morbidity from heat waves, floods and drought, changes in distribution of some vector diseases (…). The European Respiratory Society’s report shows that for every 1 degree Celsius increase in summer temperatures above defined European city-specific levels, overall death rates increase by 1-3% and by 6% amongst people with existing respiratory conditions. Add to that: environmental degradation, food shortages, increasing poverty, misery and economic instability and you have a crisis.

Many citizens are concerned about this. A recent Eurobarometer poll shows that the European public is more concerned about climate change than the current economic situation, and many believe that tackling climate change can have benefits to employment and growth.  So do our elected politicians hear this?

Seriously.  We are a few weeks from the international climate change talks, the UNFCCC COP 17 in Durban (28 November – 9 December). Expectations are high that countries will agree to a clear, fair, legally binding treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a second commitment period to the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. This is the only international legal instrument that sets binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, covering 37 so-called industrialised countries and the European Union member states. Canada, Russia, and Japan are on the opposition. The USA is not a signatory. Here we go.

On 1 November, the so-called BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) meeting in China agreed to support a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol and in their statement called upon the conference in Durban to establish a second Commitment Period to the Kyoto Protocol. Climate finance and the operationalisation of the Green Climate Fund set up in Cancun were other priority issues identified for Durban.  The BASIC countries also called on developed countries not Parties to the Kyoto Protocol to undertake comparable emission cuts under the Convention. They pledged to take measures to curb their own emissions.  These are good signs. On 4 November, leaders of the major economies, so-called developed countries, meeting at the G20 Summit in Cannes concluded by identifying the need to operationalise the Green Climate Fund as one of the priority outcomes for Durban. Let’s see what they DO in Durban.

What about the EU? Members of the European Parliament (MEPs)’s Environment Committee voted for a resolution on 26 October that calls for support to the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol and called on the EU to work towards finding an agreement on the sources and management of the Green Climate Fund. The MEPs restated their call for the EU to increase its emissions reduction target for 2020, beyond the current 20% emissions reductions compared to 1990 levels. They also want to see new measures to cut aviation and marine emissions.  During a recent debate with the EU Commissioner for Climate in the same Committee on 7 November, MEPs called for bold EU action before Durban. These are wise words from MEPs.  The Commissioner hears this and talked of finding a common ambitious global solution.  The problem is that some EU member states, luckily not all, do not want bold action by the EU, nor for the EU to increase its climate target beyond 20% – for various reasons. But 20% is not enough[1]. And addressing climate change can have benefits to health, the environment and the economy.

Health co-benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, such as those from increasing the EU’s emissions reduction target from 20% to 30% compared to 1990 levels (a 10% increase), can save up to 30.5 billion Euros by 2020. These changes are mainly the result of improved air quality, which promote substantial improvements in respiratory and heart health. Reductions in healthcare costs can be an added incentive as several countries are struggling to balance their budgets and a healthier workforce can contribute to increasing productivity. No time to waste.

This year will see the first ever Climate and Health Summit at an international climate change conference. The Summit, on December 4, co-organised by Health Care Without Harm will take place parallel to the UNFCCC meetings at the Tropicana Hotel in Durban, South Africa. The event will bring key health sector actors from around the world together to discuss the impacts of climate change on public health and solutions that promote greater health, as well as economic equity between and within nations. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, climate finance, healthcare sector contribution, health co-benefits and many others will feature. One of the outcomes of this Summit is to contribute to the negotiations taking place in Durban, not only by ensuring health representation, but also by making sure that key policy solutions from the Summit make their way to the Conference.  Watch this space.

Durban is not the end of the road, said the EU Commissioner for Climate. Indeed, in mid-next year we have the Rio+20 Summit and its ‘green economy’ agenda.

Already the UNDP’s 2011 Human Development report highlights that health and income development in the so-called developing countries are hindered by inaction on climate change and environmental degradation and destruction. We have work to do! Please contact and join us.

[1] IPPC (International Panel on Climate Change) 4th Assessment Report, 2007, IPCC recommendations: collective greenhouse gas emissions reductions by and within industrialised countries of 25-40% by 2020 from 1990 levels are needed to give only a 50-50 chance of limiting warming to 2 degrees.

Categories Advocacy, Climate, Health policy
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Coal powered energy is a public health issue

by cahaorg
November 21st, 2011
This article was written by Dr Helen Redmond from Doctors for the Environment Australia for Medical Observer on 21st November 2011.
COAL is a health hazard and Australia has an addiction to it. Our state and federal governments have not acknowledged the health consequences of mining and combusting coal, although evidence for harm to human health is well documented in the scientific literature.

Precious little research has been done in Australia despite coal communities like those in the Upper Hunter region of New South Wales asking for comprehensive health studies for nearly a decade. 

Earlier this year an article in the MJA highlighted the health impacts of coal and summarises the available literature,1  but governments appear reluctant to find information that would slow the mining juggernaut and the flow of royalties. 

Coal is a health hazard because every stage in the life cycle of its production from exploration, extraction, processing, transport and combustion produces a waste stream of air and water pollutants that harm human health.

Communities living around mountaintop removal coal mines in the US have a higher incidence of cancer, cardiovascular disease, lung and kidney disease, low birth weight as well as higher rates of birth defects and learning difficulties, even when results are adjusted for age, level of education and smoking status. 

Children are particularly vulnerable. Burning coal releases mercury, lead, chromium, carbon monoxide, fine particulates, arsenic and sulphuric acid to name just a few.

Living within 30 miles (48.2 km) of a coal-fired power station increases the risk of premature death by 3–4 times compared with living at a distance from coal power stations. 

Coal is also a health hazard because it is the largest contributor to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. 

The 2009 Global Humanitarian Forum Climate Change Human Impact Report estimates climate change now claims 315,000 lives annually and severely affects 325 million people. This is only the beginning of a prolonged rise in such effects. 

Addiction is a disorder where short-term dependence overrides the capacity for reasoned decision-making despite damaging long-term consequences. In an individual with an addiction, their welfare and that of those close to them suffers. 

In the case of our addiction to coal, individual citizens and whole communities suffer while governments do not accept the responsibility of harms beyond their term of government. 

It is easier to take another dose of coal than the reforms necessary for withdrawal. 

Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal, and coal mining is expanding because 75% of it is exported. 

Of course all energy sources have their hidden environmental and health costs, even renewables. In an age of increasing energy hunger and increasing consequences on climate and environment, governments should be weighing up carefully the externalities for each and every energy source: coal, gas, unconventional gas, solar, solar-thermal, wind, geothermal, biomass, wave, etc. 

A health impact assessment should be part of any assessment for new mines and energy projects. We should understand the full economic, social and environmental consequences and health implications, both in the short and long term before deciding on any particular source of stationary or transport energy. 

Once the health and social costs of coal are accounted for, coal is no longer a cheap energy source. The damage arising from mining and burning coal doubles or triples the true cost of electricity generation.2

So who pays?

We all do, with our current and future health.

For more information, contact Doctors for the Environment Australia at: www.dea.org.au

Dr Helen Redmond FAFRM (RACP)

Doctors for the Environment Australia will send a poster Coal is a health hazard to 22,000 GPs across Australia tomorrow.

References

1. MJA 2011; 195: 333-335\
2. Ann NY Acad Sci 2011; 1219: 73-98

Categories Advocacy, Coal, General
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Why we need to transform Australia: leading public health expert

by cahaorg
October 21st, 2011

First published by Melissa Sweet on the health blog Croakey

Emeritus Professor Bob Douglas writes:

Earlier this month in Geelong, I attended a National Summit on “Transforming Australia”. This was a three-day meeting of 60 invited activists from various civil society groups around Australia.

We were united by a common concern that Australia will not be able to deal effectively with the problems that now confront the human world without transformative change in the way we manage our institutions, and especially our economy.

The firm view of this group was that simply tinkering around the edges of “business as usual” is a formula for national catastrophe. The starting point for most of the participants was that we must urgently transform our governance, our economy and our culture in ways that will permit our descendants to live within the limits of nature’s economy.

Australia’s political system is largely ignoring the seriousness of the gathering storm that includes climate change, peak oil, disastrous loss of ecosystems, increasing world hunger and inequity and continuing growth in the human population.

It is currently incapable of addressing these issues because it is being corrupted by the special interests of the status quo. If our children are to survive to a ripe old age we must transform our political institutions, including especially the way they are funded.

The Geelong Summit was the 5th meeting I have attended on this topic in the past 18 months. The Transform-Australia movement is still in its infancy but it is a growing network of thinkers, researchers, environmentalists and social policy activists.

The summit was an opportunity for sharing understanding and assets and to explore together, the process of building a radically new way of thinking about Australia’s future.

Of course, similar movement are developing in other countries around the world. Ours is not the only political system that is proving incapable of dealing with the realities that threaten our habitat.

But the consequences for Australia if we do not do so are more disastrous than in many other parts of the world. Already it seems from evidence presented by a national expert on the matter, our marvellous coral reefs are almost certainly doomed.

There was much discussion about the factors that motivate change. Fear for the future is a strong stimulus to denial.

Genuinely believing that a better and more attractive future is achievable is more likely to result in openness to radical change than lots of doom-saying.

That being said, we can no longer ignore the scientific evidence that our human world has already crossed a number of critical natural boundaries, which means that we have exceeded already by about 50% the Earth’s capacity to sustain us in our current use of resources and release of waste.

Yet, still our population and the global economy are growing and eroding these precious resources.

So, where to next?

We are a smart species; too smart I hope to hasten our own extinction.

Smart enough also I think to recognise that there are greater satisfactions in being alive then simply possessing more “stuff”.

Realistic enough to understand at last that limits to growth have been reached and that we are capable of designing a stable state economy that will work, not just for some people, but for all of us, and the planet’s health as well.

All of this will clearly take some time and those who are frightened of change will resist it if they can.

A number of groups now exist in Australia, committed to the transformative task.

The Transform-Australia Group, which helped to convene the summit, has a website and a Manifesto, which it invites ordinary citizens and community groups to endorse.

The Transform Australia Manifesto spells out a vision, mission and values as well as aspirations for the evolving movement.

Its current supporters include a group of 10 catalysts who see their task as promoting broad scale community understanding of systems thinking and the shift in mindset that is required in the special circumstances that we now face.

The Vision for the Manifesto reads as follows:

“Our vision is for a Transformed Australia, where the well-being of all humans and the health of the planet are synonymous; where we accept that nature is our provider and we are its stewards; where we acknowledge that our economy, ecology and ecosystem are interdependent; and where a sustainable future for our descendants exists”.

If you have read this far, I hope you will visit the website, consider the manifesto in its entirety and append your name as a supporter of the principles espoused there.

Essential change will only come as a result of the will and insistence of people in the community.

Leadership will not come from our politicians on this matter but they will respond to the community’s lead.

Bob Douglas is Chair of SEE-Change ACT and a catalyst with the Transform Australia group. He is a medical epidemiologist, and was formerly the Director of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at The Australian National University.

Croakey 

This article was first published on 21st Otcober 2011 on the Crikey health blog, Croakey.

Categories Uncategorized
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Four Degrees Report

by cahaorg
August 4th, 2011

By Dimity Williams

Dimity Williams attended the Four Degrees conference as a Doctors for the Environment Australia member (and CAHA member) and shares main messages here.

The presentations are at http://www.fourdegrees2011.com.au/

“It was an excellent conference with international speakers updating attendees on the latest climate science and coincided with the release of the government’s carbon tax package. The premise of the conference was to describe the 4 degree world our politicians are planning for and in so doing motivate us for mitigation. In this they certainly succeeded as the science is very grim. 

Key messages for me were:

  • Australia is the most vulnerable continent to climate change impacts
  • The current CO2 concentration is 392 ppm (pre-industrial 280); the current level of warming is one degree above pre-industrial levels
  • There is an enormous disconnect between the international agreement to limit global warming to 2 degrees (450ppm)  and the current policies which see us (with a fossil fuel intensive model) reaching 4 degrees warming by 2070 – and hence 8 degrees by 2300. No human life at this temperature.
  • We need to peak global emissions by 2020 to have a 2/3 chance of  limiting warming to 2 degrees 
  • Global damage is a highly non-linear function of global warming ie. once certain tipping points are crossed there is no way to reverse them and a cascade starts ie. the Greenland ice sheet loss may be triggered at 1.5-2.5 degrees 
  • Preliminary evidence suggests that once global temperature is over 5 degrees it will rapidly accelerate above 10 degrees
  • This is the CRITICAL DECADE for action to avert dire climate change; a strong mitigation future is technologically and economically feasible but is it politically feasible?

All speakers can now be heard on the conference website and I highly recommend you spend some time listening for yourself.  See link: http://www.fourdegrees2011.com.au/

Excellent sessions were:

Session 4- Australia at 4 degrees

 Excellent discussion of heat waves and El Nino impacts recently by CSIRO /BOM scientists

 Session 5- Australian Biodiversity impacts

Australia has 7-10% of global biodiversity; we are the most vulnerable continent because we are flat and have nutrient poor soil.  This means that species migration is especially great ie. with one degree warming, species need to move 100m altitudinally and 125km south; this is difficult as many of our rivers run east-west

  • Australia currently has the highest mammal extinction rate in the world.  For every 1 degree of warming 100-500 species of bird will become extinct.  Ecosystems can only withstand <0.1 degree temperature increase per decade (current rate 0.13deg C; 0.46 at higher latitudes)
  • In addition to mitigation, the answer here is to protect more land, restore some of what’s lost and understand that landscape level management is more important than individual species ie. protect ecosystems

Session 6- Australian Marine impacts

  • Oceans maintain climate by absorbing CO2, generating O2 through marine plants and absorbing heat.  They also supply our food and generate income through tourism and food supply
  • Impacts due to climate change include warming, acidification and a reduction in oxygen content
  • The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) generates $6 billion/year and employs 63,000 people- second largest employer in QLD.  GBR is the most biodiverse ecosystem in Australia and is especially vulnerable to global warming as we see mass coral bleaching and acidification of the ocean
  • 80% world’s coral reefs are at risk of disappearance at 1.5 degrees warming
  • Coral reef safety threshold crossed at the latest at 336ppm in 1979
  • As the ocean has warmed, species have migrated south, today at 1 degree of warming marine organisms have moved 100km south and there is 50% less coral cover now than 50yrs ago
  • By 2030 we can expect annual mass coral bleaching- the reef does not always recover from this ie. most pacific reefs bleached in 1998 have not recovered.

 Session 9- Health impacts by Professor Tony Mc Michael

 The issue is not adaptation to 4 degrees of warming as this will not be possible- the need is to strengthen our resolve to mitigation

  • Australia’s lack of action on climate change is causing thousands of deaths in the third world
  • Causal paths for health impacts are:

1. Environmental health hazards, ‘exposures’- extreme temperatures and extreme weather events; increased concentrations of air pollutants and aeroallergans

2. Loss of and change in environmental functions ‘services’ – lower food yields, reduced fresh water, change to natural constraints to infection, reduction in nature’s buffers ie. forests and reefs, psychological effects

Tony asked “What do economists eat?”  We don’t just catch fish to sell them as a commodity; we catch them as a food source to maintain our health.

Session 15- Mitigation- Can we?

An excellent solutions-focussed session.  I especially enjoyed the presentation from Anna Skarbek from CLIMATEWORKS whose answer was clearly ‘Yes we can!

There was also an address by Greg Combet, Minister for Climate Change and Ross Garnaut discussing the carbon tax package.

Next steps

I personally would prefer to attend a conference where we talk about limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees as 2 degrees sees us accepting the loss of entire countries (ie. Maldives, Pacific islands etc) and I wonder if the scientific community is allowing itself to have its parameters set by the political agenda?

I would also like to see some research focus on mitigation rather than just the adaptation focus of the NCCARF and a place for science and health experts not just economists on key advisory groups like the Climate Change Authority.”

Categories Climate, General, Uncategorized
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So the carbon price means climate policy is sorted, right? Wrong…

by cahaorg
July 11th, 2011

The announcement this week that agreement has been reached to pass the first significant piece of national climate policy has been a good news story for the government and generated a modest sense of victory among climate action advocates.

But among all the relief, enthusiasm and general disbelief that the Australian parliament could actually agree on something so sensible as a committment to reducing emissions, it is useful to remind ourselves why we are doing this, what the end goal is, and where we are on the journey so far.

The point of it all, after all, is to reduce emissions, not just arrest emissions growth – and presumably that would be one of the criteria in evaluating the effectiveness of the policy. Also that those emissions reductions are sustained over time, and ultimately lead to zero emissions – given that, according to the science, the Earth is already too hot, and we need to not only cut emissions to zero, we also need to draw down legacy emissions in the atmosphere if we wish to stabilise the climate.

Ahh, the science, you sigh. The pesky scientists! When will they be happy?! Don’t they know how difficult it is to negotiate a politically acceptable deal? Well, yes, but in the realm of physics and atmospheric chemistry, Abbott doesn’t matter, Monkton doesn’t matter, and Andrew Bolt doesn’t matter – atmospheric CO2 just continues to rise, the oceans more acidic and the ice sheets melt, regardless of how politically inconvenient it might be.

And what do the scientists say? Well, Melbourne will have the opportunity to find out this week, with visiting climate experts Hans Schnellnhuber and Malte Meinhausen in town from the Potsdam Institute in Germany. The occasion is “Four Degrees’, a conference hosted by Melbourne University, so named because that’s the lower end of the anticipated rise in global average temperature by the end of this century if we continue on the business as usual path.

A climate that is an average of four degrees hotter is completely unprecedented in human history, and if Schellnhuber’s advice from 2009 is anything to go on – humankind will be “toast” at that sort of rise. The Earth has not been four degrees warmer for the last ten million years, and humans were not around then to test their response to it.[i] But the predictions are that we won’t go so well – Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change in the UK, believes only around 10 per cent of the planet’s population – around half a billion people – will survive if global temperatures rise by 4C.

Anderson was fairly frank back in 2009: “For humanity it’s a matter of life or death,” he said. “We will not make all human beings extinct as a few people with the right sort of resources may put themselves in the right parts of the world and survive. But I think it’s extremely unlikely that we wouldn’t have mass death at 4C. If you have got a population of nine billion by 2050 and you hit 4C, 5C or 6C, you might have half a billion people surviving.”[ii]

Meinhausen and others have calculated what volume of greenhouse gas emissions we can pump into the atmosphere between now and 2050 to have a reasonable chance of keeping warming lower than 2°C (above pre-industrial levels). We can only emit 1000 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) between the years 2000 and 2050. Trouble is, we’ve emitted a third of that in just nine years.[iii]

If we were to share the total remaining carbon budget equally throughout the world on a per capita basis, Australia would exhaust its budget (as one of the highest per capita emitters in the world) in just seven years.

Our commitment in Australia remains (for now) a 5% reduction in 2020, and 80% by 2050. But the science says, if we were to deal with this in an equitable manner, we need to get to zero in less than a decade.

Just to give some perspective.

So while the carbon price package is welcome, and quite possibly is the best we could get in the current political environment. But let’s not kid ourselves that it is bold, generous, or responsive to the science.

And whose fault is that? Well, that’s just the problem, Australians are all too ready to point the finger elsewhere (at the government, at business, or anywhere – else) and say “they” failed; “they” should have done something else; “they” should have shown some leadership. All that might be true, but parliamentarians will only respond when their constituents demand something of them, and so far, most people in Australia are content to bury their heads in the sand, and pretend it’s not happening, or simply distract themselves by wishing the growth economy back to health, as if continuous economic growth was possible on the back of the loss of natural capital, in the middle of a mass extinction event, when we have gone well into ecological overshoot and are playing pretend that if we use up natural resources faster than they can be replaced that some magical process will make it all right in the end.

At its core, climate change is a health issue. Around 300,000 people are dying each year from climate change.[iv] Around five million more will die in the coming decade if we fail to act effectively.[v] The bulk of the climate health burden (over 80%) falls on children – that’s right, children, who are powerless to make decisions to increase those emissions that are destroying their health and their future; powerless to say “stop, we choose a different future”.[vi] Children, for whom the health burden is not temporary, but for whom early exposure to disease leaves them with lifelong vulnerabilities. Who face higher exposure to pollution per unit of body weight. Who by virtue of having more future years of life face greater threats over a longer period that the rest of us.

Who will advocate for them?

Despite the declaration in The Lancet in 2009 that “climate change is the biggest threat to global public health of the 21st century”, health professionals have so far failed to respond in ways that are proportionate to risk. Public health experts describe a wearied tolerance from other health colleagues when they hold forth on climate change – as though it were some sort of personal hobby horse whereas others in different parts of the sector are “busy saving lives” and “don’t have time for this sort of indulgence”.

Well, that’s regrettable because climate change will eclipse all other threats to health in the coming decades if we don’t turn our attention to finding solutions to the biggest threat there is. We must of course continue to act on existing disease burdens, as many will be (are being) exacerbated by climate change. But this threat is global, it’s enormous, and until the world seriously turns its attention to dealing with it, climate change will bring unprecedented and dramatic negative impacts on human health.

The good news of course is that there is good news. Many strategies to reduce emissions will also bring health gains. This should be also a major source of attention for health professionals – and a focus of their advocacy for action on climate. Because advocating for action on climate change is possibly the biggest contribution health professionals can make to global public health. The health message is one that, despite the best efforts of some, remains missing from the climate policy story. But the evidence suggests that, when framed as a health issue, climate change is more likely to be perceived in an individual context, and people are more likely to support action for mitigation.

We’ve seen a little bit of political leadership on the issue this week. But we mustn’t imagine that’s enough. The job is much, much bigger than that, and the voice of all health professionals, as respected leaders in society, would be very welcome in keeping this trajectory on track, to denounce those who misrepresent the science, and to call for action as civil society leaders to send the clear message to the rest of the community, from people who have no vested interest, that climate action is urgent, and ultimately, it’s good for health.

[i] Morton, A. Four degrees of separation, The Age, 9 July 2011. Available at: http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/four-degrees-of-separation-20110708-1h6yi.html#ixzz1Ri3kgqmC; [ii] http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Warming-will-39wipe-out-billions39.5867379.jpg; [iii] Meinshausen, M. et al. Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, Nature, 30 April 2009; [iv] Vidal, J. Global warming causes 300,000 deaths a year, guardian.co.uk, 29 May 2009; [v] DARA, Climate Vulnerability Monitor 2010: The state of the climate crisis, December 2010; [vi] Sheffield, P. and Landrigan, P. Global Climate Change and Children’s Health: Threats and Strategies for Prevention, Environmental Health Perspectives, Volume 119 | Number 3 | March 2011.

Croakey

This article first appeared on 11 July 2011 on the online blog Croakey, the Crikey health blog.

Categories Advocacy, General, Health policy
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Health missing from the climate story

by cahaorg
May 23rd, 2011

By Fiona Armstrong

In all the to and fro of the current carbon pricing debate here in Australia, one important aspect of the story on climate action is missing.

Why are we acting on climate change? Well, because of the evidence that it poses risks to the global economy, to infrastructure, and to our natural environment. All that is true and makes for a compelling case for action. But at its very core – climate change is a health issue.

It places the safety and wellbeing of our species in jeopardy. Climate change is already responsible for the deaths of more than 300,000 people each year.[1] Five million more deaths are expected during the next decade if no effective action is taken to reduce climate risk.[2] Over 80% of the disease burden attributable to climate change falls on children.[3]

The international medical journal The Lancet outlined the stark facts in 2009: that the effects of climate change from global warming “puts the lives and wellbeing of billions of people at increased risk”.

Climate change presents serious immediate and long term threats to the health and wellbeing of the Australian and global population.

The direct health effects of climate change include deaths, injury, and hospitalisation associated with increasingly frequent and intense bushfires, cyclones, storms and floods and heatwaves.[4] Indirect effects include increases in infectious and vector borne diseases, worsening chronic illness, and health risks from poor water quality and food insecurity.[5]

Health care services in Australia are already experiencing dramatic increases in service demand from climate related events, such as heatwaves and floods.[6],[7] The heatwave that preceded the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria in 2009 saw a 62% increase in mortality from heat related illnesses and worsening chronic medical conditions. During this five day event, there was a 46% increase in demand for ambulances; an eight-fold increase in heat related presentations to emergency departments; a 2.8 fold increase in cardiac arrests; and a threefold increase in patients dead on arrival.[8]

So there are many compelling reasons to act on climate change from the point of view of reducing health risks. This story is missing however from the policy debate – it is missing in the explanations from our leaders about why we must act, it is missing from the narrative of many advocacy groups who imagine that a threat to polar bears will be sufficient to elicit support for action. This is not proving to be the case.

Health is not only one of the most compelling reasons to act on climate change – its actually one of the reasons most people will feel compelled to act on climate change, because framing climate change as a health issue is one of the ways we can best appeal to people’s individual assessment of risk from climate change. Put in a health context, people are far more inclined to consider climate change as an issue that affects them.

And there are many health gains possible from climate action. Reducing our reliance on energy supply from coal and encouraging shifts in transport away from fossil-fuel-guzzling cars to public transport will reduce air pollution, improve social capital and bring concurrent increases in activity which, in turn, all help reduce obesity, osteoporosis, heart disease and diabetes, not to mention road traffic injuries and deaths.

Shifting away from coal as a fuel source for electricity will improve air quality and reduce related deaths from lung cancer and heart disease. Switching to low emissions and more active transport systems can significantly improve air quality and reduce respiratory disease, as well as cut the incidence of obesity, chronic illness and cardiovascular disease. Changing to a diet with lower meat consumption can cut emissions from livestock production as well reduce heart disease and diabetes.[9]

The economic argument for the health benefits of climate action is also very strong: a recent report from the European Union reveals significant health and economic benefits are associated with strong targets for emissions reductions, with a target of 30% reduction by 2020 expected to deliver health care savings from avoided ill health of €80 billion per year.[10]

Effective action on climate change has the potential to significantly reduce the health costs (both economic and social) we will face in the next decade and the coming century. It’s also an important way to build public support for action [11]. If our political leaders were serious about building public support (and acting in the national interest), they would be talking about addressing “the biggest threat to global health of the 21stcentury”,[12] not talking about compensating polluting industries.

That needs to change.

[1] Vidal, J. Global warming causes 300,000 deaths a year, guardian.co.uk, 29 May 2009.

[2] DARA, Climate Vulnerability Monitor 2010: The state of the climate crisis, December 2010.

[3] Sheffield, P. and Landrigan, P. Global Climate Change and Children’s Health: Threats and Strategies for Prevention,

Environmental Health Perspectives , Volume 119 | Number 3 | March 2011.

[4] McMichael, A. J., and Butler, C. Climate change and human health: recognising the really inconvenient truth, Medical Journal of Australia, Volume 191, No. 11/12, December 2009.

[5] Nicholls, N. Climate science: how the climate is changing and why (and how we know it), Discussion Paper, National Climate Change Adaptation Facility, August 2009.

[6] Carthey, J., Chandra, V., Loosemore, M. Adapting Australian health facilities to cope with climate-related extreme weather events, Journal of Facilities Management, 7:1, pp.36-51.

[7] Victorian Government Department of Human Services, January 2009 Heatwave in Victoria: An assessment of health impacts, 2009, Melbourne.

[8] ibid

[9] The Lancet, Executive Summary, Health and Climate Change Series, November 2009.

[10] Health and Environment Alliance and Health Care Without Harm Europe, Acting Now for Better Health, Report, August 2010.

[11] Maibach, et al. BMC Public Health, 2010, 10:299.

[12] Costello A, Abbas M, Allen A, et al. Managing the health effects of climate change. Lancet 2009; 373: 1693-1733.

This article first appeared on 23 May 2011 on the www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org blog hosted and edited by Stephan Lewandowsky from University of Western Australia.

Categories Advocacy, Health policy
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Levies, wild weather and global warming

by cahaorg
March 22nd, 2011

The passing of the flood levy to rebuild Queensland by the Senate today will allow for a new beginning for thousands of people affected by the floods, and go some way to addressing the damage repair bill – estimated as billions of dollars.

This levy will assist in alleviating some of the catastrophic impacts of the floods on the state and on local communities, for whom recovery will take months and years as houses and infrastructure are rebuilt, and lives and businesses pieced back together. It is to be hoped the support of government and community along with relief appeals will make the task of rebuilding easier for affected communities.

But as communities are rebuilt, what preparations are being made to protect them from future damage and risk?

These floods were a sobering reminder of the power and influence of the natural environment on the safety and wellbeing of the community.

But one of the most extraordinary aspects of the recent extreme weather in Australia was not the ferocity and scale of the record breaking events but the absence of any public dialogue about the link between these events and global warming.

The recent floods in Queensland and Victoria have been widely acknowledged as being of epic and unprecedented proportions but little is being said about the human contribution to forces driving these events.

Just as the reports from the devastating bushfires in Victoria in 2009 ignored the contribution of anthropogenic global warming and its subsequent effects on the severity and frequency of extreme weather events, there has been little or no recognition among journalists or political leaders about the links between climate change and the floods that affected hundreds of thousands of people across Australia.That politicians ignore the issue is easier to understand – the Queensland Premier has an election to fight next year and her government has recently endorsed an ongoing to commitment to industries responsible for causing climate change, such as coal.

But the failure of the mainstream media to question this contribution, to seek the advice of experts, or to draw links between these events and global warming in an effort to educate (one the media’s most important roles) the community on this issue is bewildering and alarming. The failure to do so will almost certainly come at considerable future cost to the community. The costs of cleaning up and rebuilding after the floods in Queensland is enormous, and goes well beyond financial and extend to broader economic as well social, psychological, and human health costs.

Given the likelihood that these events will occur again, with one in a hundred year events now occurring every few years (or in the case of St George, every year), and with increasing intensity and frequency, we should be seeing a recognition of this in actions to prevent further catastrophe for populations at risk.

The scientific evidence is extremely clear: continuing to burn fossil fuels for power generation and thus contributing to further global warming places the entire human population at great risk. It places particular populations (e.g. those residing on low lying areas; some coastal communities; those with limited water security) at considerable risk. For too long, too many Australians seem to have adopted the view that climate change is only going to affect poor people, far away. But as evidenced by recent events in Australia, we can now count ourselves as among those populations at great risk. This level of risk has arisen from the global average temperature rise that has already occurred of just 0.8°C.

This level of warming took around 100 years to occur. However we know that, thanks to an inexorable rise in greenhouse gas emissions (up about 10% each decade in Australia), atmospheric CO2 levels have now risen to 390ppm, higher than at any time during human civilisation on Earth. This is considered responsible for increases of global average temperatures of around 0.2°C per decade.

Given there is now demonstrable current catastrophic effects on our local population from less than 1°C rise, it is incredible to witness the failure to acknowledge this risk by those in a position to not only inform the population of this seminal risk, but those who have accepted responsibility to lead our community.

Russian President Medvedev acknowledged the link between extreme weather events and global warming in 2010 when unprecedented soaring temperatures contributed to 56,000 deaths in his country, saying “… what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past.”

The effect of these events on Australian communities is shocking. And it is regrettable that only now will many Australians feel any empathy with the 750,000 recently left homeless in Sri Lanka from flooding and the 20 million displaced in Pakistan in 2009.

Emeritus Professor of Science and Technology at Griffith University in Queensland, Ian Lowe said: “The Queensland floods are another reminder of what climate science has been telling us for 25 years. As well as a general warming and increasing sea levels, it predicted more frequent extreme events: floods, droughts, heatwaves and severe bushfires.”

In order to continue to protect communities from ongoing and increasing risk from these extreme weather events in Australia, it is time our political leaders and those in the media acknowledged the evidence of the risk we face. For in order to obtain the requisite community support for policy action, more information about these risks must be shared explicitly with the community.

Businesses that are bearing the brunt of extreme weather events are less reticent to do so, with global reinsurer Munich Re stating in December 2010: “The only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change”.

Given that we can’t take effective action unless the entire community comprehends the very grave risks we face, it is time our leaders (and more of the media) did the same.

 Fiona Armstrong is the founder and convenor of the Climate and Health Alliance.

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