The warning could not be starker. “The science is unequivocal,” wrote the editors of over 200 international health journals in a simultaneously published call to action last month. “A global increase of 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average and the continued loss of biodiversity risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse.”
Preventing such a calamity is a task not only for the politicians who will soon gather in Glasgow for the UN’s COP26 climate change conference, but also for the world’s healthcare providers. It is they who are already having to deal with the immediate effects of climate change on human bodies and minds. But they must also recognise that they, too, have contributed to the problem — because healthcare systems are significant carbon emitters.
Climate change threatens health along multiple fronts. Heat is the most obvious danger: a recent study estimates that over one-third of heat-related deaths between 1991 and 2018 can be attributed to climate change. By the second half of this century, 1bn people could be living in locations where physical labour is hazardous, even in the shade. Wildfires are increasing in frequency and intensity in some regions, exposing large populations to toxic smoke.