Melissa Sweet writes:
The health sector has been given a playbook for squarely naming and addressing fossil fuels as a public health threat that is causing a global health emergency.
A new report from Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA), released at Parliament House this week in the presence of many MPs, identifies the wide-ranging harms caused by the “extraction, processing, utilisation and waste disposal of fossil fuels”.
As well as being the primary drivers of global heating and causing harmful air pollution, fossil fuels contribute to biodiversity loss and are the main source of plastics, “which are clogging our arteries as well as our oceans”, says the report.
Titled ‘Fossil fuels are a health hazard: A comprehensive report on the health impacts of coal, oil and gas, and a treatment pathway to reduce health harms’, the report presents a clear message that “we must quit fossil fuels to protect health”.
DEA plans to send a copy of the report to every federal MP before the next election, and to hold community events across Australia to “help spread the word that fossil fuels are a health hazard”, Dr Kate Wylie, a GP and executive director of DEA, told Croakey after the launch.
It comes as a new analysis shows Australia is the world’s third-largest fossil fuel exporter, after Russia and the United States.
If current trends continue, by 2035 Australia, with 0.3 percent of the world’s population, would consume nine percent of the world’s total remaining carbon budget, the amount of CO₂ that could still be emitted from 2024 onwards if we are to limit peak warming to 1.5°C with 50 percent probability.
Australia continues to approve new fossil fuel exploration and production although the International Energy Agency has clearly said there should be no new fossil fuel development if the world is to limit warming to 1.5°C – the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal.
Treatment pathways
Meanwhile, the DEA report lays out a ‘treatment plan’ for government, the private sector and individuals, arguing that to achieve a rapid phase out of coal, oil and gas requires concerted efforts from everyone.
The report calls for phasing out of fossil fuels and acceleration of investment in renewables, removal of fossil fuel subsidies, the prohibition of fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship, “just like we did with smoking”, and a ban on native forest logging.
Among the calls to action for individuals, the report urges becoming politically active.
Speaking at the report’s launch, Dr Kate Wylie said that subsidising coal and gas is “as unethical as subsidising asbestos or tobacco”.
“We talk about the health harms of tobacco, the health harms of alcohol, the health harms of gambling, the health harms of stone benchtops,” she said, “let’s talk about the health harms of fossil fuels, which is causing more death and disability than all of those problems combined.”
The Assistant Minister for Health and Aged, Care Ged Kearney, who has charge of the National Health and Climate Strategy, hosted the launch. Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy Josh Wilson also attended.
Wylie said that Shadow Health and Aged Care Minister Senator Anne Ruston and Dr David Gillespie, who held health ministerial positions under the former LNP Government had declined an invitation.
Wylie said the presence of Government MPs “says to me that the Government does appreciate there’s health harms from fossil fuels, that they acknowledge it’s a problem, and that there is dissonance within the Government that they do continue to open new coal and gas, and yet they can see this problem. So there’s an uneasiness within the Government.”
Wylie said she hopes the report will signal a shift, and that use of the health hazard framing will help Australians to understand the problem and shift the narrative.
Wylie urged Croakey readers to sign the DEA petition, read the report, engage with local MPs and “think about climate when you vote”.
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