Reports are emerging from the NSW floods of residents saying they were given little warning “of the catastrophe that was approaching”.
Politicians cannot make the same claims about the catastrophic effects of climate change, which are increasingly felt across Australia, and which include extreme rainfall events.
For years, scientific, medical and health agencies and leaders have called for urgent action to phase out fossil fuels, and for governments to invest in mitigation and adaptation efforts.
Below is a statement published this week by leading medical, nursing, healthcare, patient advocacy, public health, and environmental health organisations in the United States, warning that “climate change puts everyone’s health at risk, regardless of where you live”.
While the statement is directed at US audiences, Croakey readers may find much that is relevant for the Australian context – especially as the Albanese Government considers further fossil fuel expansion, with it being highly likely that most mainstream media coverage of related policy decisions will not even mention the health issues at stake.
Beneath the US statement below are links to other recent climate health news.
A declaration on climate change
We are leading medical, nursing, healthcare, patient advocacy, public health, and environmental health organisations. We work to ensure that our patients and our communities are healthy and safe. But health and safety are actively threatened by climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal.
People everywhere understand that our changing climate is harming our health because they’re living through the impacts right now – from worsening wildfires, extreme heat and flooding events, to the increased spread of diseases like Lyme and West Nile, to poorer mental health as a result of climate disasters.
As health organisations, it is our duty to urge leaders at every level to take swift action to address the health impacts of climate change and reduce the pollution driving it.
Climate change is a health emergency that is already harming health and causing loss of life. The window to prevent the worst impacts is rapidly closing.
Here are health impacts of climate change that everyone should know:
- Climate change puts everyone’s health at risk, regardless of where you live.
- Lots of people are at increased risk of getting sick or injured as a result of climate impacts, even if they don’t realise it. They include kids, seniors, people with chronic diseases like asthma or diabetes, people who are pregnant, people with disabilities, people who work outdoors, people with low-incomes, people of colour and many more.
- Extreme heat is killing people. It causes more deaths than any other weather-related hazard, and climate change is making it much worse. Heat is also linked with a wide array of short-term and long-term illnesses.
- Wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense, spreading dangerous smoke that is making people sick. Particle pollution and other harmful substances in the smoke are linked to lung disease, lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, dementia, and preterm birth.
- Climate change is making smog worse. Warmer temperatures increase smog (also called ozone pollution), which is linked to asthma attacks, lung disease, cardiovascular disease, preterm and low birthweight infants, cancer, harms to brain health and premature death.
- Storms and flooding are getting more severe, causing injuries, worsening physical and mental health, and cutting people off from their healthcare.
- Disease-carrying insects like ticks and mosquitoes are multiplying and spreading to new areas, increasing exposure to illnesses like Lyme disease and Dengue fever. Water- and food-borne pathogens are also spreading.
- Allergy seasons are getting longer and more intense.
- Rising carbon dioxide are projected to decrease the nutritional content of crops.
Here’s the good news: we are making progress, and there are commonsense opportunities for action at every level. Plus, most of the actions that reduce the pollution driving climate change result in immediate health benefits by reducing other dangerous air pollution too.
Leaders at every level must take action to:
Dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, vehicles, industry, and appliances in buildings. Burning coal, methane gas (aka “natural” gas), oil and other fossil fuel is driving climate change and making people sick from air pollution at the same time. We need to power our vehicles, heat and cool our buildings and run our manufacturing facilities on electricity wherever we can, and get that electricity from truly clean sources like wind turbines and solar panels. The best way to protect health is to make as much of each of these sectors as zero-emission as possible.
Ensure that pollution is cleaned up in all communities. Don’t allow communities that have historically borne a disproportionate burden from air, water and soil pollution to continue to suffer the most severe health harms, and protect these communities from new polluting industries.
Defend existing rules that protect our health. The nation has strong measures currently on the books that are helping to drive down dangerous emissions. Leaders at every level should call for them to be kept in place, not rolled back or weakened. They include tighter limits on mercury and air toxics from power plants, limits on the carbon pollution that drives climate change from power plants, strong new limits on methane pollution from the oil and gas industry, an updated national standard for particle pollution, new cleaner cars standards, new cleaner trucks standards, and investments in clean electricity and clean transportation.
Ensure funding and staff expertise for public health, healthcare and environmental health systems to ensure they have adequate resources to protect communities by identifying, preparing for and responding to the health impacts of climate change.
Coordinate across the federal, state, and local levels to empower community leaders to protect those most at risk and ensure access to continuous, quality healthcare during and after disasters.
We call on decision makers at every level to protect America’s health by taking steps now to dramatically reduce pollution that drives climate change and harms health. 
Other updates
The climate health emergency was also in focus at the World Health Assembly this week. The comments below are from Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, the WHO Regional Director for Europe.
Nature: Globally representative evidence on the actual and perceived support for climate action
“Mitigating climate change necessitates global cooperation, yet global data on individuals’ willingness to act remain scarce. In this study, we conducted a representative survey across 125 countries, interviewing nearly 130,000 individuals. Our findings reveal widespread support for climate action.
“Notably, 69 percent of the global population expresses a willingness to contribute one percent of their personal income, 86 percent endorse pro-climate social norms and 89 percent demand intensified political action. Countries facing heightened vulnerability to climate change show a particularly high willingness to contribute.
“Despite these encouraging statistics, we document that the world is in a state of pluralistic ignorance, wherein individuals around the globe systematically underestimate the willingness of their fellow citizens to act.
“This perception gap, combined with individuals showing conditionally cooperative behaviour, poses challenges to further climate action. Therefore, raising awareness about the broad global support for climate action becomes critically important in promoting a unified response to climate change.”
Croakey notes that the survey was done in 2021-2022; perhaps support for climate action might be higher now, given that the impacts of climate change will have been felt by many more people since then.
See Croakey’s archive of articles on fossil fuels and health
