The Lancet: Fossil Fuels Are Killing Us… Quitting Them Can Save Us

From an Article by Jon Queally, Common Dreams, June 23, 2015

Comparing coal, oil, and gas addiction to the last generation’s effort to kick the tobacco habit, doctors say that quitting would be the best thing humanity can do for its long-term healing.

The bad news is very bad, indeed. But first, the good news: “Responding to climate change could be the biggest global health opportunity of this century.”

That message is the silver lining contained in a comprehensive newly published report by The Lancet, the UK-based medical journal, which explores the complex intersection between global human health and climate change.

“It took on entrenched interests such as the tobacco industry and led the fight against HIV/AIDS. Now is the time for us to lead the way in responding to another great threat to human and environmental health.” — Prof. Peng Gong, Tsinghua University

The wide-ranging and peer-reviewed report—titled Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health—declares that the negative impacts of human-caused global warming have put at risk some of the world’s most impressive health gains over the last half century. What’s more, it says, continued use of fossil fuels is leading humanity to a future in which infectious disease patterns, air pollution, food insecurity and malnutrition, involuntary migration, displacement, and violent conflict will all be made made worse.

“Climate change,” said commission co-chairman Dr. Anthony Costello, a pediatrician and director of the Global Health Institute at the University College of London, “has the potential to reverse the health gains from economic development that have been made in recent decades – not just through the direct effects on health from a changing and more unstable climate, but through indirect means such as increased migration and reduced social stability. Our analysis clearly shows that by tackling climate change we can also benefit health. Tackling climate change represents one of the greatest opportunities to benefit human health for generations to come.”

The four key findings of the report include:

1. The effects of climate change threaten to undermine the last half-century of gains in development and global health. The impacts are being felt today, and future projections represent an unacceptably high and potentially catastrophic risk to human health.

2. Tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century.

3. Achieving a decarbonized global economy and securing the public health benefits it offers is no longer primarily a technological or economic question – it is now a political one.

4. Climate change is fundamentally an issue of human health, and health professionals have a vital role to play in accelerating progress on mitigation and adaptation policies.

“When health professionals shout ‘emergency’ politicians everywhere should listen.” —Mike Childs, Friends of the Earth“Climate Change is a medical emergency,” said Dr. Hugh Montgomery, commission co-chair and director of the UCL Institute for Human Health and Performance. “It thus demands an emergency response.”

With rising global temperatures fueling increasing extreme weather events, crop failures, water scarcity, and other crises, Montgomery says the report is an attempt to make it clear that drastic and immediate actions should be taken. “Under such circumstances,” he said, “no doctor would consider a series of annual case discussions and aspirations adequate, yet this is exactly how the global response to climate change is proceeding.”

In a companion paper published alongside the larger report, commission members Helena Wang and Richard Horton explained why human health impacts are an important part of the larger argument regarding climate change:

When climate change is framed as a health issue, rather than purely as an environmental, economic, or technological challenge, it becomes clear that we are facing a predicament that strikes at the heart of humanity. Health puts a human face on what can sometimes seem to be a distant threat. By making the case for climate change as a health issue, we hope that the civilizational crisis we face will achieve greater public resonance. Public concerns about the health effects of climate change, such as undernutrition and food insecurity, have the potential to accelerate political action in ways that attention to carbon dioxide emissions alone do not.

Responding to the findings and warnings contained in the report, Mike Childs, the head of policy for the Friends of the Earth-UK, said the message from one of the world’s foremost institutions on public health has given powerful new evidence to the argument that “radical action is urgently required” to avoid further climate catastrophe.

“When health professionals shout ‘emergency’,” Childs said, “politicians everywhere should listen.”

Going from diagnosis to prescribing a remedy, the doctors and scientists involved with the report—who equated the human health emergency of climate change with previous physician-led fights against tobacco use and HIV/AIDS—argue the crisis of anthropogenic climate change demands—as a matter of “medical necessity”—the rapid phase-out of fossil fuels (with special emphasis on coal) from the global energy mix. In addition, the authors say their data on global human health support a recommendation for an international carbon price.

“The health community has responded to many grave threats to health in the past,” said another commission co-chair, Professor Peng Gong of Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. “It took on entrenched interests such as the tobacco industry and led the fight against HIV/AIDS. Now is the time for us to lead the way in responding to another great threat to human and environmental health.”

The Commission argues that human health would vastly improve in a less-polluted world free from fossil fuels. “Virtually everything that you want to do to tackle climate change has health benefits,” said Dr. Costello. “We’re going to cut heart attacks, strokes, diabetes.”

A video, produced by the Commission and released alongside the report, also explains:

As Wang and Horton conclude in their remarks, “Climate change is the defining challenge of our generation. Health professionals must mobilize now to address this challenge and protect the health and well-being of future generations.”

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Not ‘If’ But ‘How’: New Study Shows Why All Extreme Weather Is Climate Related

From an Article by Nadia Prupis, Common Dreams, June 23, 2015

New research explains why people debating whether or not specific events are caused by climate change have it all wrong

The debate over climate change has long focused on determining attribution—whether rising greenhouse gases and global warming caused a particular storm, drought, flood, or blizzard. Now, a new study in Nature Climate Change published Monday seeks to shift the underlying question from “if” to “how.”

“The climate is changing,” wrote National Center for Atmospheric Research scientists Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo and University of Reading physicist Theodore Shepherd in their study, Attribution of Climate Extreme Events. “The environment in which all weather events occur is not what it used to be. All storms, without exception, are different. Even if most of them look just like the ones we used to have, they are not the same.”

PennFuture Facts: Vol. 14, No. 20 — October 25, 2012:

 ”The sounds of silence“

It’s as if they all forgot about the record-breaking heat, droughts, floods, wildfires, and other extreme weather events over the last few months. September was the 331st straight month with above-average temperatures worldwide, and the 36th straight September with a global temperature above the 20th century average. Extreme weather has gotten more extreme, and more expensive, with the prominent insurers crediting it as the leading edge of global warming. Arctic sea ice the size of Canada and Texas combined melted away this summer. And scientists are warning that we have reached the tipping point on climate change.

But with all this evidence — not just from scientists, but from the personal experiences of citizens both home and abroad — not one word was uttered in any of the presidential and vice presidential debates on climate change. This was the first time since climate change was identified in the ’80s that the debates failed to include discussion of global warming. Even when the moderator in the last debate asked, “What do you believe is the greatest future threat to the national security of this country?” — an obvious opening for a longer, more fulsome response than simply identifying one part of the world or one particular group — neither Gov. Mitt Romney nor President Barack Obama said a word about climate. Instead, the people of the world were treated to silence.

This silence occurred as people in the United States are increasingly saying they believe that global climate change is happening, and that it caused by our behavior. Over two-thirds of Americans say there is solid evidence that the earth’s average temperature has been getting warmer over the past few decades. And only one in five thinks this is happening naturally.

Belief in global warming crosses party lines. Fully 85 percent of Democrats say there is solid evidence that the average temperature has been getting warmer. Nearly half of Republicans (48 percent) agree, as does a majority of independents (65 percent). It’s clear that it isn’t public opinion that is keeping the candidates from mentioning climate.

But there has been a sea change in the political dialogue in the past four years. What’s different? The tea party and the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

The tea party, whose original organizing funding came from the fossil fuel industry through Americans for Prosperity, has created a reign of terror against any scientist, elected official, or candidate who might speak in favor of taking action to combat global warming. They have led the harassment of climate scientists online, in the media, and in person. They have shouted down anyone who disagrees with them. And in 2010, they systematically defeated incumbents who believe that we must take action on global warming — particularly Republicans — making support for fossil fuels and opposition to science litmus tests.

Under the 2010 Citizens United decision, corporations are able to invest unlimited and unreported money into political ads. Forming so-called 527 groups (named after the pertinent IRS code), which operate independent of political party organizations, the groups have become major financial players in presidential and congressional campaigns, spending tens of millions of dollars to try to influence directly who wins and who loses. The debate has been framed by many of these groups as a war on coal vs. action on climate change and funding for renewable energy.

All of this has created a chilling effect, and nowhere is it more dramatically seen than in the debates and in the presidential campaign.

Two years ago, Gov. Romney spoke about global warming in his book, “No Apology,” saying he believed global warming was real and was at least in part caused by human activity. In the intervening two years, the Romney position has changed to denying climate change is occurring, pushing for more mining and drilling, attacking EPA clean air regulations, and calling for an end to all government investment in renewable energy.

President Obama calls climate change real, and has taken some action to mitigate global warming. Under his watch, EPA has proposed restrictions on air pollution from coal-fired power plants. He has proposed new clean vehicle standards. He is fighting to renew the tax credit American wind companies need to succeed. And he is funding other renewable energy research. But more needs to be done.

In 2012, it is unconscionable that the people running to lead our nation are failing to even discuss one of the most dangerous problems our world is facing, let alone take comprehensive action. As we look back on this year, we’ll be stunned by the sounds of silence.

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