https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/02/21/opinion/canadas-health-organizations-demand-action-prevent-catastrophic-climate-change
[Actually, we don't have 12 years to implement the necessary changes.
We need to start now (because we can't start before now) and be FINISHED
implementing the changes in 12 years if we believed the UN IPCC.
Personally, I don't believe the IPCC; they're track record shows they
are perennially optimistic and do not properly account for triggers and
feedback loops.
Darryl McMahon
links in online article]
Canada's health organizations demand action to prevent catastrophic
climate change
By Kim Perrotta in Opinion, Energy, Politics | February 21st 2019
In an unprecedented move, five national health organizations
representing doctors, nurses, medical officers, and public health
professionals gathered in Ottawa to call for urgent action to prevent
catastrophic climate change on Feb. 5.
It is an election year and all of our organizations — the Canadian
Medical Association (CMA), the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA), the
Urban Public Health Network (UPHN), the Canadian Public Health
Association (CPHA) and the Canadian Association of Physicians for the
Environment (CAPE) — agree that climate change is too important to the
health and well-being of our children and grandchildren to be treated as
a wedge issue in the upcoming federal election.
The mental and physical health of Canadians is already being harmed by
climate change. Last year, tens of thousands of Canadians had their
lives, homes or jobs threatened by wildfires, power outages, tornadoes
and floods; millions in western Canada were forced to breath toxic air
pollution as wildfire smoke blanketed their communities for days or
weeks at a time; and millions in central and eastern Canada suffered
through searing heat for much of the summer.
On a global scale, the health impacts of climate change are already
devastating. The prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, reported in
2018 that 712 extreme weather events occurred around the world in 2017,
resulting in US$326-billion in economic losses — nearly a three-fold
increase in economic losses over 2015. It also found that: 157 million
more people were exposed to heat waves in 2017 than were exposed in
2000; insect and water-borne diseases are increasing in some regions of
the world; and agricultural yield potential is decreasing in the 30
countries for which data were available. It concluded that the “trends
in climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerabilities demonstrate an
unacceptably high level of risk for the current and future health of
populations across the world.”
The health impacts we experience today pale in comparison to those
expected if we allow global warming to increase to two degrees Celsius.
The 2018 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report portrays a
world with 2C of warming as one with higher sea levels, significant loss
of biodiversity, prolonged heat waves, water shortages, shrinking food
supplies, disruptions in transportation systems, exploding numbers of
refugees displaced by flooding coastlines and parched lands, and
increased global strife. It concludes that, if global warming reaches
2C, each year hundreds of millions of people will be forced into poverty
by water scarcity, severe droughts, declining crop yields, and flooding
along coastal areas.
This bleak picture is not some distant future. The IPCC concluded that
the world, which has already warmed by 1C, is on course to warm by 1.5C
between 2030 and 2050 and by 2.6 to 4.8C by 2100. It estimated that we
have 12 years to act and that we have to cut carbon emissions by 45 per
cent by 2030, and cut them to zero by 2050, if we are to prevent global
warming from reaching 2C.
The good news is that many of the policies needed to fight climate
change will produce significant and immediate health benefits and
healthcare savings across Canada. With the burning of fossil fuels
responsible for 7,100 air-pollution related premature deaths and
$53.5-billion in health-related costs per year, climate solutions
directed at cars, trucks, coal plants, industry, and oil and gas
extraction would save many lives, reduce rates of heart disease, asthma
and lung cancer, and cut healthcare costs for the people of Canada, all
while reducing carbon emissions. With chronic diseases costing Canada
nearly $200-billion per year in treatment and lost-time, increased
levels of physical activity resulting from investments in public
transit, cycling and walking, as well as the promotion of diets rich in
plant-based proteins would save lives, reduce rates of heart disease,
diabetes and cancer, and cut healthcare costs, while reducing greenhouse
gas emissions.
We have 12 years to implement the policies needed to prevent climate
change that would result in catastrophic impacts for human health and
instability of our global community. We are the last generation that
will have this chance. We are the generation that will determine how
stable, how healthy, how habitable the world is for our children and
grandchildren. The party elected in Canada’s 2019 election will
determine the fate of future generations. It is imperative that the
party elected in 2019 treat climate change like the public health crisis
it is.
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