More than 200 medical journals call for urgent action on climate change
Global warming is already affecting people’s health so much that emergency actions on climate change cannot be suspended as the world grapples with the Covid-19 pandemic, medical journals from around the world warned on Monday.
“Health is already being damaged by rising global temperatures and destruction of the natural world,” read an editorial published in more than 220 major magazines ahead of the Cop26 climate summit in November.
Since the pre-industrial era, temperatures have risen by about 1.1 degrees Celsius (34 degrees Fahrenheit).
The editorial, written by the editors-in-chief of more than a dozen journals, including the Lancet, East African Medical Journal, Revista de Saude Publica do Brasil, and International Nursing Review, said this had caused a host of health problems.
“In the past 20 years, heat-related mortality among people 65 and older has increased by more than 50 percent,” it reads.
“Higher temperatures have led to increased dehydration and loss of kidney function, dermatologic malignancies, tropical infections, adverse mental health outcomes, pregnancy complications, allergies, and cardiovascular and pulmonary morbidity and mortality.”
He also noted the decline in agricultural production, “hampering efforts to reduce malnutrition.”
These effects, which hit the most vulnerable like minorities, children and the poorest communities hardest, are just the beginning, he warned.
As it stands, global warming could reach + 1.5 ° C at pre-industrial levels around 2030, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
And that, along with the continued loss of biodiversity, “runs the risk of catastrophic damage to health that will be impossible to reverse,” the editorial warned.
“Despite the world’s necessary concern with Covid-19, we cannot wait for the pandemic to pass to quickly reduce emissions.”
In a statement before the editorial was published, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said: “The risks posed by climate change could dwarf those of any disease.”
“The Covid-19 pandemic will end, but there is no vaccine for the climate crisis.
“Every action taken to limit emissions and warming brings us closer to a healthier and safer future.”
The editorial noted that many governments faced the Covid-19 threat with “unprecedented funding” and called for “a similar emergency response” to the environmental crisis, highlighting the benefits.
“Better air quality alone would generate health benefits that would easily outweigh the overall costs of reducing emissions,” it said.
The authors also said that “governments must make fundamental changes to the way our societies and economies are organized and how we live.”
(AFP)
