Australian health leaders, horrified by the force and devastation of Hurricane Milton, have called urgently for fossil fuels to be phased out, and for rapid investment in climate adaptation, especially for health systems.
“This must be seen as a wake-up call for all governments across our planet,” said Dr Kate Wylie, a GP and executive director of Doctors for the Environment Australia. “Our dependency on fossil fuels is killing us, and we must quit now to protect human health.”
Wylie added that “anyone who can still argue for a continued use of fossil fuels shows a short-sighted disregard for humanity and is either stupid, self-centred or both”.
Michelle Isles, CEO of the Climate and Health Alliance, said that as she watched the scale of destruction caused by Hurricane Milton, she worried that Australia is not prepared for “the un-natural disasters that are to come”.
Outlining a range of areas where investment is needed to build the climate resilience of health systems and communities, Isles said: “For six months I’ve heard government departments say they have little to zero operational budgets to focus on sustainability and climate change.
“Local health systems want to be prepared but need to be supported. Climate change is the biggest threat to the health and wellbeing of our communities.”
Isles called on the Albanese Government to invest properly in the Health National Adaptation Plan, announced by Health and Aged Care Minister Mark Butler. “Currently in development, we need actions within it to support a coordinated approach to resilience and preparedness,” she said.
Perilous times
While the full impacts of Hurricane Milton and related tornadoes will not be understood for some time, it clearly has left an horrendous trail of death and destruction across Florida, affecting health and other vital services still grappling with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
Hurricane Milton’s shockingly rapid formation came as the latest State of the Climate report, titled ‘Perilous times on planet Earth’, issued an explicit, grim warning about the threats facing humanity.
In coming years, we will face much more extreme weather, and the risk of societal collapse is also a rapidly growing topic of research, it warns.
Of the 35 planetary vital signs tracked by the report each year, 25 are at record levels, while current policies have the world on track for approximately 2.7 degrees Celsius peak warming by 2100.
“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster,” the scientists warned. “This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperilled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.”
Rapidly phasing down fossil fuel use should be a top priority, say the authors, suggesting this could be accomplished partly through a global carbon price that could restrain emissions by the wealthy while potentially providing funding for much-needed climate mitigation and adaptation programs.
Pricing and reducing methane emissions is also critical, they added.
Other calls to action were for a drastic reduction in overconsumption and waste, especially by the affluent, a focus on climate justice, reform of food production systems to support more plant-based eating, and efforts to protect, restore, or rewild ecosystems.
Climate change instruction should be integrated into secondary and higher education core curriculums worldwide to raise awareness, improve climate literacy, and empower action, the scientists recommended.
Future of humanity at stake
The report says that despite decades of warnings from scientists, the world is still moving in the wrong direction, and that “the future of humanity hangs in the balance”.
“Despite six IPCC reports, 28 COP meetings, hundreds of other reports, and tens of thousands of scientific papers, the world has made only very minor headway on climate change, in part because of stiff resistance from those benefiting financially from the current fossil-fuel based system.”
The researchers also warn that climate change could contribute to societal collapse by increasing the likelihood of catastrophic risks such as international conflict.
Climate change has already displaced millions of people, and has the potential to displace hundreds of millions or even billions more, leading to greater geopolitical instability, they say.
By the end of the century, roughly one-third of people worldwide could be outside the human climate niche, facing increased risk of illness and early death, famine, and a host of other adverse outcomes.
“Tragically, we are failing to avoid serious impacts, and we can now only hope to limit the extent of the damage,” wrote the scientists.
“We are witnessing the grim reality of the forecasts as climate impacts escalate, bringing forth scenes of unprecedented disasters around the world and human and nonhuman suffering.
“We find ourselves amid an abrupt climate upheaval, a dire situation never before encountered in the annals of human existence.”
Communications matter
On 8 October, a video clip of US meteorologist and broadcaster John Morales in tears went viral on X/Twitter. Within a few days, more than four million people had watched the clip showing his distress as he explained the forces behind Hurricane Milton.
Mother Jones subsequently published an interview where Morales explained that he teared up out of anxiety about increasing extreme weather, “frustration for lack of action on climate,” and concern for the people in Milton’s path.
Just a week previously, he had written in an article for Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that Hurricane Helene was not an outlier, but “a harbinger of the future”.
Helene’s extreme floods had resulted in apocalyptic scenes, he said. “Some small towns were mostly leveled. Others are cut off from surrounding civilisation, with no way in or out except by air. It is a humanitarian catastrophe that is still unfolding.”
Morales explained that the warming world had shifted his presentation manner from “calm concern to agitated dismay”, in order to communicate the growing threats from the climate crisis, even as misinformation and disinformation abound.
Read Croakey’s archive of articles on extreme weather events
