Climate, science and health leaders have warmly welcomed the Albanese Government’s plan for for a ‘Future Made in Australia Act’ with government intervention to drive growth and development of local manufacturing and the renewable energy industry.
In a widely-reported speech in Queensland today, the Prime Minister said the reform agenda included looking at how government procurement can support small business and local manufacturing, as well as sustainability and the circular economy, and delivering better and broader community benefit from renewable energy projects and fast-tracking the infrastructure that supports them.
It is notable, however, that the Prime Minister’s speech did not explicitly mention the significant health issues at stake, despite recent events underscoring the urgency of climate action for health and healthcare services and financing. Nor did his speech even breathe a mention of fossil fuels, amid the Government’s ongoing subsidies and support for new fossil fuels projects.
Some recent context:
March 2024 is the tenth month in a row to be the hottest on record – 9 April statement from Copernicus Climate Service said : “March 2024 continues the sequence of climate records toppling for both air temperature and ocean surface temperatures, with the 10th consecutive record-breaking month. The global average temperature is the highest on record, with the past 12 months being 1.58°C above pre-industrial levels. Stopping further warming requires rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.’’
No sign of greenhouse gases increases slowing in 2023 – 5 April statement by NOAA Research. Levels of the three most important human-caused greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide – continued their steady climb during 2023, according to NOAA scientists.
Meanwhile, the importance of doctors and other health professionals engaging in advocacy for fossil fuel phase out, environmental protection, net zero healthcare, and climate justice was highlighted at the recent Doctors for the Environment conference, held on Gadigal land in Sydney on 5-6 April.
The topic for the conference’s Great Debate – ‘Top down or bottom up – what’s going to get Australila to net-zero fastest’? – was prescient, given today’s announcement. Don’t miss the blow-by-blow account from the debate by Dr Amy Coopes, reporting for the Croakey Conference News Service.
Below is a summary of key presentations.
(Tweetbinder analytics of #iDEA24 can be seen here, showing more than 1,200 posts at the hashtag on X/Twitter, with an estimated economic value of almost $31,000).
Make a difference
After his presentation, Professor Nick Talley was interviewed by Dr Amy Coopes for the Croakey Conference News Service.
Doctors and the health system more broadly need to do much more to “clean up our own backyard” in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and tackling climate change, including through public advocacy and political engagement, he said.
Talley also urged health professionals to reduce air travel – “so more Zoom conferences” – as well to tackle plastic pollution and waste in hospitals, develop reusable strategies, and address the health problems of microplastic and nanoplastic ingestion.
He urged governments to stop subsidies for fossil fuel industry and to stop approving new projects.
“You can’t un-cook an egg”
On 5 April, conference presentations addressed the health impacts of heat.
Air quality
On 6 April, Dr Amy Coopes live-posted from the conference on X/Twitter, as summarised below.
Our theme for this morning’s session is air pollution and biodiversity, with talks on bushfire and wood smoke air pollution, gas, traffic exhaust, plastics and shark conservation.
Getting us underway is Professor Fay Johnston from the Centre for Safe Air at the University of Tasmania, taking us through health effects of bushfires and woodsmoke pollution – biomass smoke.
We breathe about 11,000 litres of air every day says Johnston. Over the course of a life, she says, this means what comes into our bodies through our lungs is as essential as food and water.
The particles released by combustion of hydrocarbons have widespread impacts on health.
Johnston says we should be considering air pollution as a risk factor for developing NCDs akin to diet, exercise, alcohol
Half of our population are at risk. People with existing illness, children, older ages, social-eco disadvantage.
Johnston says deaths are the ‘tip of the iceberg’ in terms of measuring air pollution impacts. For every death, she says there will be tens of ambulance callouts, hundreds of GP visits, thousands of symptomatic people (see diagram below).
Johnston shared new research, The Public Health Paradox of Wildfire Smoke, showing the exponential effects of air pollution worsening – orders of magnitude are most pronounced when baseline AQ (like Australia) is good to begin with. We stand to lose the most, and benefit greatest if we intervene.
Johnston concludes with an emphasis on source control being the key thing in managing the health risks – appropriate wood heater regulation and fire management strategies.
Kitchen hazards
Our next talk is by Dr Ben Ewald, epidemiologist and Newcastle-based GP, who has been leading @DocsEnvAus campaign on banning indoor gas (he also delivers coffees by kayak to mining protesters).
Ewald says gas burners are the health problem in everyone’s kitchen they weren’t aware they had. Production of NO2 –> nitric acid in lungs –> irritant and allergen. Linked to development of childhood asthma.
Ewald says this is important to consider when taking clinical history – ask about indoor heating, indoor stoves. Are your patients experiencing an asthma flare from seasonal changes or from turning the heater on?
What should we do? Stop piping gas to new builds – public education on the dangers – abolish disconnection fees Lots of progress – Vic and ACT leading the way but NSW also making inroads. Health messages are what is cutting through.
Ewald points to Australian Journal of General Practice article: Health risks from indoor gas appliances.
Other presentations
Clare Walter, who recently wrote for Croakey on the hazards of car emissions, presented on the Idle Off project, which helps school students to understand the danger of vehicle emissions to human health and address air pollution near schools.
Tara Jones from the Australian Marine Conservation Society presented on the plastic pollution crisis. Healthcare could not be envisaged without plastic, but much use is “excessive, unncessary, driven by convenience and profit”.
Jones challenging the orthodoxy that plastic/dispoable options are superior for infection control. No evidence has demonstrated this.
Interesting discussion on the fact that regulating many of these issues (wood heaters, traffic idling) seems to fall on councils, and there is little resourcing. We need to start with local buy in to achieve a groundswell that gives social licence to government.
Sharks in hot water
The conference also heard from Dr Leonardo Guida, biologist & shark advocate, that sharks are in hot water.
Guida says sharks are essential to marine food webs – these are dynamic and can become unstable, with implications for human food security. They also have major cultural significance as totem animals, and they represent a ‘double extinction’ for First Nations peoples
Because sharks are poikilotherms, they rely on their environment to control their body temperature. This has flow on effects to behavioural regulation and habitat selection
Tropical shark habitats are expected to drift further south-west due to climate change-driven shifts to the East Australian Current.. This will have major ecosystem impacts.
This will bring sharks into increasing contact with humans – habitat drift into heavily fished areas. Guida says we are already seeing increased shark bites, species spending longer periods in regions more frequented by humans; it is pure maths.
Interesting to note that sharks are themselves a carbon sink, and when we fish them out we actually exacerbate the problem.
Top down or bottom up?
The Great Debate was a conference highlight.
(Noting that Dr Nick Wood took the place of Matt Kean)
Dr Nick Wood opens for the Top Downers. Climate change is a very big problem, beyond our ability to imagine and beyond civil society to handle. He describes –> complexity of scale, w attendant risks –> need for speed & urgency –> need for efficacy (knowing what and how).
Wood says 80 percent of the wealth in the world belongs to people who have less than 20 years to live. The ‘granny doesn’t care’ effect. Bottom up is good at telling the emperor it has no clothes, but unable to offer solutions.
Kirsty Ruddock first up for the Bottom Uppers. If we don’t have the community at the heart of what we are trying to do we will never get there. Top Down is failing us consistently on this issue. We’ve needed to drag leadership to the table at every point.
Ruddock argues that if the Top Downers were doing their job there would be no need for the Bottom Uppers. This in and of itself an argument for the grassroots.
Allegra Spender up now for the Top Downers. While community has been absolutely critical, but the biggest power comes from Bottom Up engaging with those at the top. Spender blames Bad Top Down for the inertia of the past decade, but what about Good Top Down?
You need an overarching framework to mobilise the change that we need; while Paris agreement isn’t good enough, it’s the best we have and it offers a lightning rod to galvanise the action required, says Spender.
Top-down regulatory and legislative levers incentivise large-scale change and create the preconditions for these to be possible, says Spender. If we fail on Bottom Up we fail on Top Down.
Larissa Baldwin takes the floor for Bottom Up, from Get Up. Starts strongly – Murdoch press hand in glove with Top Down, murky donations, millions of dollars on lies and propaganda. Despite this, grassroots have kept the conversation and action going.
Baldwin says climate change is a really Western concept and the way it is talked about – even #NetZero – makes it irrelevant to most people. Grassroots translates, and takes a different lens – people have the solutions, and will buy in.
Yes we need to stop the problem, but if we want people to mobilise, we need communities to be the advocates says Baldwin. Baldwin is from Lismore and talking about calling a spade a spade – when it floods, talk climate. “A good message makes popular what needs to be said.”
Baldwin advocates for more independents in parliament, break the plurality, representatives who actually advocate for the interests of their constituents. People need to see themselves at the table. Instead of climate, shifting language to protecting Country.
We have elections every four years, we have billion dollar climate disasters what feels like every month now, says Baldwin. As a climate movement we need to talk much more about adaptation, and to do it when people are feeling the pinch – mid-event,
Closing for Top Down is Shane Rattenbury. This is the critical decade and we don’t have time to muck around. Rattenbury says ACT an example of Top Down action succeeding – 47 percent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels.
Rattenbury said ACT just went out and bought 7bn mW in solar and wind, rather than talking about it. It was a good feeling when [LNP MPs] Tony Abbott and Matt Canavan came for sitting weeks and sat in their renewably-powered offices.
Market failure is a powerful reason for why we aren’t getting the action we need. Renters are a large population who want action but can’t get landlords to act. For example, ACT has mandated minimum insulation requirements for tenancies. Only Top Down can make this happen.
Rattenbury reflecting on his 10 years with Greenpeace – ‘the good old days, doing illegal things’. Irony that most of the time activists out there begging for top down action. And we all know, from Abbott/Morrison era, how important it is because that is how failure looks.
Bringing it home for the Bottom Up is Joseph Sikulu from 350.org. Net Zero is a falsehood, he begins. Built on unproven, exploitative methods eg Pacific carbon marketplace. Solutions must include and centre Indigenous communities.
Sikulu says the answer to this problem is in building strong culture, community-led and owned solutions. Climate change is a disease that is killing the planet, in a system that is designed to profit from plunder, and which positions Top Down at its centre.
Sikulu names the elephant in the room: Top Down is what created the climate crisis in the first place. Quotes a Kiribati elder to COP: ‘White Sugar, White Bread, everything that is bad for our islands is White.’
Instead of #NetZero, it should be a race to liberating our people from the stranglehold of the fossil fuel industry. That is a Top Down race that can be won and is worth pursuing, says Sikulu.
Sikulu speaking to the importance of meeting people where they are at – if people care about housing and cost of living we need to help them see the parallels/connections to climate of these issues
Stop selling the recipe and start selling the cake says Baldwin. What does reform actually mean and look like? Is key to getting people on board.
Question on media concentration & Murdoch distortions. Spender is still hopeful of action in this area but not in this term of parliament. Manning says climate disinformation (SkyNews as a hub) is a global problem in our backyard.
Baldwin says now more than ever people are actually moving away from mainstream media sources, and are also immersed in a global information ecosystem. How do we campaign in this environment? REAL CONVERSATION MATTERS!
How do we have conversations with people that we disagree with and walk away having learned something? It’s a life skill which has been eroded by COVID isolation and the polarised online environment.
Nick Wood says four degrees of warming is game over. Life forms as we know it won’t survive. No human civilisation has ever survived a climate change event. 1.5 is somewhat manageable. 3 degrees would be an end to democracy & civil rights. It gets very serious very fast.
Rattenbury says wealthy people will survive. The climate crisis is also, and fundamentally, an inequality crisis.
Spender speaking to the emergence of the teal movement – the most wealthy electorates in the country, but also very motivated and driven for climate action. Critical not to polarise.
Baldwin reflecting on first learning about climate change and looking at a map of Australia, realising that it would mean the forced relocation of and removal of people from country. We need to be talking in these terms, about the impending refugee crisis.
Baldwin speaking to the importance of moving people into positions of solidarity where they hold space for and don’t leave behind the narratives of marginalised populations.
Sikulu says ‘every year’ they read COP as a death sentence, there is no will to actually change.
Rattenbury speaking about EVs – only one part of the puzzle. Need people friendly cities where you can walk, cycle, so conditioned to living in car-dominated communities.
Watch Dr Ben Dunne on sustainability in healthcare
