“Climate change poses an immediate, growing and grave threat to the health and security of people in both developed and developing countries around the globe.
“Climate change leads to more frequent and extreme weather events and to conditions that favour the spread of infectious diseases. Rising sea levels, floods and droughts cause loss of habitat, water and food shortages, and threats to livelihood. These trigger conflict within and between countries.
“Humanitarian crises will further burden military resources through the need for rescue missions and aid. Mass migration will also increase, triggered by both environmental stress and conflict, thus leading to serious further security issues. It will often not be possible to adapt meaningfully to these changes, and the economic cost will be enormous.
“As in medicine, prevention is the best solution.”
This is the introduction to a statement issued yesterday from a conference in London on the health and security implications of climate change. It was held at BMA (British Medical Association) House and convened by the BMJ.
It stands in such stark contrast to the focus of so much of the public debate in Australia since the House of Reps passed the carbon tax legislation last week.
The BMJ’s conference blurb notes that the event was “borne of an unlikely alliance – between health leaders and military experts. Frustration at the slow progress in tackling the causes of climate change at national and international level led to a series of discussions and an editorial in the BMJ. From these beginnings, a loose partnership of concerned organisations has emerged, with a common aim of highlighting the urgent need for action.”
The conference blurb describes climate change as “the greatest current threat to public health”. It says: “This is the view shared by Dr Margaret Chan, director general of WHO, and a growing number of the world’s health professionals. Less well known is the view of leading military experts – those working to prevent and manage conflicts around the world: that climate change is also the greatest future threat to security.”
You can read the full conference statement here.
The conference recommendations include calling for developed countries to adopt more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets, to increase their support for low carbon development and to invest in further research into the impact of climate change on health and security.
As well, all governments are urged to enact legislative and regulatory change to stop the building of new unabated coal-fired power stations and phase out the continuing operation of existing plants prioritising lignite generation as most harmful to health.
***
“Don’t underestimate the enemy”
The BMJ Editor-in-Chief, Dr Fiona Godlee, was tweeting from the conference, and here are some of her reports (the conference program gives the titles of the speakers she quotes):
Have just opened #healthandsecurity climatechange.bmj.com conference. Michael Jay – don’t need hype, hard headed science is scarey enough
Chris Rapley, British Antarctic Survey #healthandsecurity, sea levels rising at 3.5 cm per year due to ocean warming and ices melting
Chris Rapley:Is the climate warming, is it us, does it matter, and should we do something about it? Yes, yes, yes and yes
Chris Rapley #healthandsecurity lower and mid atmospheric layers are warming while stratosphere is cooling so CC not due to sun warming up
Hugh Montomgery: we are in the midst of the greatest and fastest mass extinction ever
Tony McMichael: global crop yields will decline as photosynthesis slows when average temperatures rise above 40 C
Jon Snow: all private cars should be banned in central London.Resounding applause from this audience
Tim Lang: the public health sector is pathetic and I speak from inside it. Going to have to radically change our diet
Paul Wilkinson: many changes needed to tackle climate change will be good for our health and quality of life
Malcolm Green: Don’t underestimate the enemy on climate change. Huge vested interests. We need courage, money, a strategy
Delegates at climatechange.bmj.com call for us all to put heads above parapets: “We should all be full time activists”.
***
Armed forces keen to reduce carbon footprint
Meanwhile, the BBC reported on the conference, citing research suggesting that climate impacts will make conflict more likely, by increasing competition for scare but essential resources such as water and food.
Military officers at the meeting also emphasised the interest that armed forces have in reducing their own carbon footprint. Several officers admitted that armed forces were “the gas-guzzlers of the world” – and while that was sometimes necessary in operations, reducing fossil fuel use and adopting renewables wherever possible made sense from economic and tactical points of view.
The Global Campaign for Climate Action features interviews with some of the conference speakers.
***
Meanwhile, in Australia….
Australian public health experts have urged health organisations to support carbon pricing.
In this recent article, Carbon pricing is a health protection policy, in The Medical Journal of Australia (full access only to subscribers), they say that “…a carbon price is especially in the interests of those with low incomes, whose lives will be more disrupted by climate change than will the lives of the wealthy, and among whom the negative health impacts will be greater.”
The back story to this article – concerns about a recent Royal Australasian College of Physicians media statement on climate change – is explained in previous Croakey posts (and in somewhat more direct language than in the MJA article…)
***
Investigating the connections and claims of the anti-wind farm lobby
In case you missed them, Crikey recently published two articles from public health advocate Professor Simon Chapman investigating the links between individuals and organisations opposing wind farms, and the credibility of research cited by them.
• The web of vested interests behind the anti-wind farm lobby
• Latest windfarm research is a load of hot air
***
Who in health is backing green causes?
Also well worth reading is Guy Pearse’s recent analysis of The Climate Movement in The September issue of The Monthly.
One of the philanthropists supporting climate change action who received a mention is Robert Purves, who has a number of health industry links, including as the former chair and major shareholder of health group DCA.
(Sourcewatch has more biographical detail, as does this University of Sydney citation).
The Monthly reported that Purves has given millions of dollars to the WWF, is the primary sponsor of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, supports the core global team running Earth Hour, and funded a stack of other such groups and initiatives. Pearse also wrote: “Few people realise that Purves substantially funded the writing and extensive promotion of Tim Flannery’s book The Weather Makers.”
***
Update, 19 Oct
Further to the London conference, Julian Sheather, ethics manager at the BMJ, suggests that we are in the grips of “mass collective denial” about climate change.
He writes: “…if the climate change predictions are reliable – and it is likely that they are – and the results of the continuing rise in carbon production are as catastrophic as they are predicted to be, why do we continue as if nothing in the world has changed? Scientists are close to unanimous about the problem. The solution: a global economy based on green energy sources, is both well-established and technologically feasible. So why is it that even those who are fully signed up to the problem behave almost without exception as if nothing is happening? We drive, we fly, we consume, we gorge on unnecessary calories, we clamour for economic growth. How is it that, to judge by our behaviour rather than our pious words, even the best educated among us refuse to accept the truth?”
Sheather says he went home from the BMJ conference feeling “desolate”.
“It would seem that the long day of economic growth driven by fossil fuel consumption is waning. The shadows are lengthening. And unless the motivation for real change can be found, the night ahead of us will be long and dark and we may not recognise ourselves when we emerge from it.”
“Chris Rapley, British Antarctic Survey #healthandsecurity, sea levels rising at 3.5 cm per year due to ocean warming and ices melting”
This sort of statement annoys me as it is out by a factor of 10. University of Colorado (who have been tracking sea levels for decades) have their increase in sea level to be 3.2 mm +-0.4 a year. Most satellite observations put it at around 3-4mm a year.
Climate change is a reality, but the hysteria is a bit much sometimes and this sort of exaggeration doesn’t help the cause.
That such a relatively simple thing as the amount by which sea levels are supposed to be rising is heavily and hotly contested infers that science has practically no idea what is going on with changing climate patterns, or how – and what to speak of why. And yet….
A green army? (wth??)
And a band of physicians(!?) that declares “As in medicine, prevention is the best solution.”
This whole ‘global warming’ / Carbon Tax thing is actually pure comedy gold.
Good luck, sirs, with your efforts to alarm and inform.
Calculating sea level rise is “relatively simple”? Why would anyone think that?
Also, “infer” doesn’t mean what you think it does.
Once again I’d like to register my disappointment that Croakey is saluting the Climate Change Juggernaut.
There are plenty of genuinely interesting and far more immediate health issues that are worth discussing.
If anyone needs me I’ll be over at The Conversation…
I took the seal level rise tweet as a prediction of what may happen.
Isn’t it interesting how the deniers feel justified in ignoring the huge body of evidence about climate change because of such trivial matters as this sea level tweet!
On one hand we have a consistent world view where rational scientists have looked at the evidence and made rational conclusions, and this has been rationally followed up by economists and politicians (including some on the right).
The deniers think that throwing a few stones at this world view is enough to shatter it, without ever thinking of what world view would replace it.
If climate change is wrong, how do we explain the huge amount of evidence of change and warming? How has the conspiracy been formed that has the vast majority of scientists of every country under every type of political regime all supporting climate change? What about the greater conspiracy of the economists and politicians who believe in action?
I’ve yet to read anything that casts real doubt on climate change, and I’ve yet to find anything the proposes a rational world view that takes into account the measured facts and the need for lots of conspiracies.
The carbon tax in Australia would be an ok first step if there was any intention to very soon make many more steps. Instead we have Gillard promising that there will never be a carbon tax on petrol for consumers. And those who report on the political circus are so out of touch with reality that Michelle Gratton wrote something along the lines of Bob Brown being insane for saying that one day there would be a carbon tax on petrol.
Both the deniers and those who think that the carbon tax will fix things have their heads buried very deep in the sand.
And even those who should be supporting the environment (ACF, WWF, etc) are making so much noise supporting the carbon tax and saying well done that the they dare not mention that if is far too little too late.
Having worked in the scientific area in research teaching and clinical practice for over 50 years, I cannot recall any previous issue of public health importance where the basic premises of scientific enquiry have been so manipulated and ignored. For instance, anyone who doesn’t meekly accept ALL of the arguments and supporting studies without question suddenly becomes “the enemy”, to be labelled with the derogatory term ” skeptic”!
Indeed, unlike other areas of science and medicine, such outcasts are never included in any round-table discussions or Committees planning or making policy decisions.
Science (at least since the end of the dark ages) has always been inclusive and embraced those who dare to question the prevailing wisdom, so that they can be judged by the counter-arguments that they prosecute, not shunned and treated as scientific lepers!
Yes, a large proportion of the population accept that there has been a change in global temperature, and that a cogent and well-supported argument can be made that man-made carbon emissions contribute to this. The extent of this is far from settled Sadly, it is when the zealots talk and act with closed minds (“the enemy”, “skeptics”) and come up with half-baked solutions that threaten our fragile economy , and pollies seize on it and push it down everyone’s throats, that a large proportion of the population becomes alienated. Perversely, the end result is, of course, that there is little likelihood that any Government in 2015 (probably Coalition)is likely to implementing the proposal that is currently going through Parliament. The tragedy is that with adherance to basic scientific principles and and a lille bit of creative and inclusive politics, one of many other much smarter and less costly solutions could have been implemented!
@Ron,
I’ve yet to read anything which casts real doubt on the conclusions of the IPCC and Garnaut reports. Every time I’ve researched a claim made by a denier I’ve very quickly found out why they are wrong.
Perhaps in medicine we should be inclusive and all major decisions should not only have our usual medical experts but should include a faith healer, homeopath, and representative of the other side of the medical debate (i.e. the doctor who thinks that smoking is good for you or the doctor who denies that HIV causes AIDS).
Ron sort of sounds reasonable. But if the science says that our share of cuts to prevent warming of over 2 degrees is a 40% cut on 1990 levels by 2020, I’m not sure how “a little bit of creative and inclusive politics, one of many other much smarter and less costly solutions could have been implemented!”
As MWH says, Ron sounds “sort of reasonable”, but I can’t see the point of entertaining opinions from people who have yet to produce any convincing science that AGW is wrong. Whenever we ask for some published, peer-reviewed science ( you know, Ron, the real thing) we get the whine about “conspiracy” and “grant-seeking cabal of established experts”.
Come on, Ron, show us some convincing science from these “outcasts” and then tell us why they shouldn’t be outcasts….
Try telling Tuvalu that the sea level rise isn’t a problem.
http://media.adelaidenow.com.au/multimedia/2008/10/tuvalu/tuvalu-perthnow.html
From climate progress
And yet we get our scott and scottyea calling these people alarmists. No they are conservatives who are consistently underestimating the repercussions of climate change.
The London conference is fair warning to what we may experience in the very near future in storm surges and tropical rainfall and cyclones and there manisfestations. The Carbon abatement Bills are only the first step and will require considerable expansion and modification before we attempt to meet the requirements that the climate change spectre demands.
Whilst major mining companies expend billions of dollars protecting new and old infrastructure from the affects of climate change they continue to fund anti action campaigns to protect the public and their infrastructure.
Insurance companies have spent the last twenty years having conferences up down the eastern coast with local council staff in an effort to mitigate their risk of climate change. At the same time many of them deliver affective campaign support to procastinate the delivery of the beginnings of a policy for the public’s protection. Meanwhile the media attends to their own interest to expand a lucrative advertising platform by addressing the controversy rather than the science and the risks.
Yes many of the Harvard school MBA’s that control the destiny of our Mining, Finance, Media, Insurance and major corporations are proving to be leadership failures. No wonder a recent Canberra conference called for a review of Management and Leadership.
Published scientific observations and projections of the Artic, Antartic and Glaciers from Europe to New Zealand point to an imminent change in climet change that will be catastrophric to many people on the planet.
Scientist tell us that climate change will not arrive along a steadily inclined lineal graph line but by radical swings from one extreme to the other. We have already experienced both seasonal and out of seasons flooding rains and an increase in the intensity and number of cyclones and these are only a portent of what we may experience in the not too distant future.
So it is time for our Academic, Corporate, Religous, Community and Political leadership to set about developing policies and implementing programs to mitigate the risks to the community and their store of infrastructe in a constructive manner.
anyone who doesn’t meekly accept ALL of the arguments and supporting studies without question suddenly becomes “the enemy”, to be labelled with the derogatory term ” skeptic”!
First, “skeptic” is the term denialists apply to themselves because they don’t like being known as denialists. Personally I prefer the term “inactivists”, but that suggests a lack of activism, rather than the very active denial of science they engage in.
Second, skepticism and eliminating poor data is inherent to the scientific method. Most people simply aren’t very familiar with how science works, they just know it does, so it’s very easy for reactionary conservatives to claim that rigorously-obtained data is being accepted on faith.
No one just “accepts” the arguments or data on climate change, meekly or otherwise. They remain because they haven’t been disproven, despite the efforts of the inactivists.
Third, far from skeptically assessing the science, the inactivists have embraced every single false theory against climate change that has emerged so far. Every single one.
Remember when the IPCC was wrong because climate change was caused by solar rays? How about that brief time when the “skeptics” were dead-set convinced that orbital wobbles were responsible? Volcanoes? Urban heat islands?
While scientists are carefully eliminating faulty theories, the inactivists dive into baseless conjecture with complete faith and conviction. Did you know the sun is a ball of iron? Ian Plimer does.
Finally, everyone whose memory stretches back further than a few years will recall that the people who now claim to be skeptics and find a new reason each month to explain climate change away (except CO2, of course) didn’t even acknowledge that the climate was changing at all until about 2007.
That, Ron, is why inactivists are perceived as enemies of science, not earnest participants in an important scientific debate.
Science (at least since the end of the dark ages) has always been inclusive and embraced those who dare to question the prevailing wisdom, so that they can be judged by the counter-arguments that they prosecute, not shunned and treated as scientific lepers!
This is one of the more audacious inactivist claims.
There is a clear pattern throughout history of people with progressive ideas putting forward the evidence for their ideas, and being ruthlessly persecuted by authoritarian conservatives who are resistant to change and completely supportive of the powerful institutions that stand to lose from acceptance of the data.
It happened when Galileo challenged the geocentric solar system, it happened when researchers proposed germ theory, it happened with the cancer-tobacco link and it’s still happening with evolution.
Apparently we’re to believe that the people who have been on the losing side of every scientific debate in history, and have always made the same arguments on the same bases, have got it right this time and are set to expose the global green communist agenda, etc, etc.
Ron: “Science (at least since the end of the dark ages) has always been inclusive and embraced those who dare to question the prevailing wisdom, so that they can be judged by the counter-arguments that they prosecute, not shunned and treated as scientific lepers!”
Wrong, Ron. The history of science is littered with lepers…some of whom triumph, in or after their lifetimes. A recent example is Freeman and Warren’s 1982 discovery that a bacterium caused most stomach ulcers…they won the Nobel Prize in 2005. They were ridiculed for years by their own profession.
“The solution: a global economy based on green energy sources, is both well-established and technologically feasible.”
This is the key deception. The rising tide of verbal sludge (“transitioning to clean green energy”) obscures the fraud: Australia is on a fossil fuel binge, a bonanza. Gillard correctly said (twice) that “coal has a fantastic future”. Renewable energy technology is either useless (wind), hopelessly expensive and/or embarrassingly undevelop