Doctors
urged to take climate leadership
role
The
Guardian (London) April 6,
2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/05/doctors-climate-change-leadership
Doctors
urged to take climate leadership
role
Military
and medical experts call on
doctors to
use their
position of trust in society to
build
support for
action on climate
change
By Fiona
Harvey
Doctors
must take a leading role in
highlighting
the dangers
of climate change, which will
lead to
conflict,
disease and ill-health, and
threatens
global
security, according to a stark
warning
from an
unusual alliance of physicians
and
military
leaders.
Writing in
the British Medical Journal
on
Tuesday, a
group of military and medical
experts,
including
two rear admirals and two
professors of
health,
sent out an urgent message to
governments
around the
world. "Climate change poses
an
immediate
and grave threat, driving
ill-health
and
increasing the risk of conflict,
such that
each feeds
upon the other," said the
authors,
Lionel
Jarvis, surgeon rear admiral at
the UK's
Ministry of
Defence; Hugh Montgomery,
professor
of human
health at UCL, London; Neil
Morisetti,
rear
admiral and climate and security
envoy for
the UK; and
Ian Gilmore, professor at the
Royal
Liverpool
hospital. "Like all good
medicine,
prevention
is the key."
The threat
to national security and health
from
global
warming have been addressed
separately in
the past,
but the BMJ editorial urges
governments
to treat
them together. "It might be
considered
unusual for
the medical and military
professions
to concur,"
wrote the authors. "But on
this
subject we
do."
The authors
urge doctors to use their
position of
trust in
society to build support for
action on
climate
change. "Although discussion is
good, we
can no
longer delay implementing tough
action
that will
make a difference, while
quibbling over
minor
uncertainties in climate
modelling. Unlike
most recent
natural disasters, this one
is
entirely
predictable," they warned.
"Doctors,
often seen
as authoritative, trusted,
and
independent
by their communities, must make
their
voices
heard in calling for such
action."
Prof
Montgomery told the Guardian that
doctors
should take
up the climate challenge just as
they
did with
the harm from tobacco. "Many
doctors see
suffering
and death first-hand on a daily
basis.
They
recognise that prevention is far
better than
waiting for
disease, when cure may not in
fact be
possible.
They are also uniquely able
to
translate
abstract harm into a vision of
real
suffering-
just as they were with
cigarette
smoking and
lung cancer," he said. "Now, as
then,
they must
play their part - impressing upon
their
governments
the immediacy and gravity of
climate
change and
its impacts on their citizens,
and
those of
other countries."
Prof
Gilmore added that doctors could
have an
influence
both as a body and in their
individual
work: "Some
of the things that are good
for
health are
also good for the climate,
like
exercise
and a diet that is lower in meat.
That's
a win-win
situation."
But doctors
could also influence
government
policy, and
the NHS's policy on greenhouse
gases,
he said:
"We have a responsibility to
steer the
government
towards more
climate-sensitive
policies."
Such a call
is likely to be seen as
controversial
by many in
the medical profession, and
beyond it,
particularly
in the light of last
year's
"climategate"
controversy in which
many
scientists
found themselves under attack
from
commentators
and bloggers.
While
medical journals have highlighted
the
problems of
climate change in the past,
few
physicians
have spoken out on the
issue.
The warning
from medical and military
leaders
came as
government officials from around
the
world met
in Bangkok in the latest round of
the
long-running
talks under the auspices of
the
United
Nations Framework Convention on
Climate
Change
(UNFCCC). The Bangkok conference,
which is
a
preliminary session to the major
meeting in
Durban this
December, is low-key and not
expected
to produce
a breakthrough.
Christiana
Figueres, executive secretary of
the
UNFCCC,
told the conference that Bangkok
was an
opportunity
to consolidate the gains made at
last
year's
Cancún climate conference,
when several
important
issues - including forestry -
were
broadly
resolved.
"Here in
Bangkok, governments have the
early
opportunity
to push ahead to complete
the
concrete
work they agreed in
Cancún, and to
chart
a way
forward that will ensure renewed
success at
the next UN
climate change conference in
Durban,"
she said.
"If governments move forward in
the
continued
spirit of flexibility and
compromise
that
inspired them in Mexico, then I'm
confident
they can
make significant new progress in
2011."
But several
major issues remain to be
resolved,
she
acknowledged, including the
future of the
Kyoto
protocol and building the
institutions
necessary
to deliver greenhouse gas
emissions
cuts and
financing.
The BMJ's
warning, carried in an editorial
in the
magazine,
drew on several sources,
including the
Pentagon's
2010 Quadrennial Defense Review
to
Congress,
which highlighted the national
security
aspects of
climate change, and statements
from
the UK's
ministry of defence and the
foreign
secretary,
William Hague, who called
global
warming
"perhaps the 21st century's
biggest
foreign
policy challenge". The BMJ
authors found
that
climate change would exacerbate
"poverty,
environmental
degradation, and the
further
weakening
of fragile
governments".
But the
scale of the challenge is such
that the
involvement
of doctors and tough actions
on
emissions
are necessary, according to
the
authors.
"We must adapt our cities and
their
infrastructure
to cope with these
challenges
through
combining engineering design and
public
health
initiatives - for example,
developing
resilience
in clean water and drainage
systems,
using human
and food waste for energy
generation,
and
building roads to act as flood
pathways. At
the same
time we need to ensure that the
military
can still
operate effectively to sustain
security
in this
changing environment. As with
prevention,
effective
adaptation will require an
approach
that
encompasses the whole of society
and
international
collaboration."
