People gather at Melbourne hospital to hear about heat and health

More than 200 people were at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital’s Ella Lantham Auditorium yesterday to see the Climate Council launch the latest of its many reports.

The report: “The Silent Killer: Climate Change and the Health Impacts of Extreme Heat” argues that more needs to be done to prepare Australia’s health and community sectors to cope with the pressures from more frequent and severe heatwaves,

Australian National University researcher and president of the Climate and Health Alliance, Dr Elizabeth Hanna, was the facilitator for the launch.

Speakers at the launch were:

A Professor of Biology and a Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research Integrity and Development) at Macquarie University and a Climate Councillor, Professor Lesley Hughes;

A Research Professor at the University Western Australia, a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne, a patron and founding director of the Telethon Kids Institute, and former Australian of the Year, Professor Fiona Stanley; and, finally,

The Melbourne-based emergency physician and vice-president of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Stephen Parnis.

The report’s authors for that although many states have taken significant steps to upgrade their heat and health warning systems since the deadly heatwaves of 2009, strategies vary considerably from state to state and focus primarily on reactive rather than long-term planning.

It found that climate change is a serious health threat for many Australians; as extreme heat events worsen, the risk of adverse human health impacts is increasing; heatwaves can put intense pressure on health services; while the health sector has made 

Lesley Hughes.

significant steps in improving resilience to heatwave events, more needs to be done; and that the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions rapidly and deeply was the best way to protect Australians from worsening extreme heat events.

The near two-hour launch was loaded with loaded with fascinating questions and answers, but few that exceed one from an audience member who said had something of a “big question”.



“What action would it take to enlighten or change the thinking of the average Australian person?, he asked.

Prof Hughes responded by saying that if anyone had an answer to that question, to which she said there was no simple answer, she urged them to contact the Climate Council.

She quoted a fellow Climate Councillor who always said there is no silver bullet, only silver buckshot.



Fiona Stanley.

Prof Hughes said that when she started with the Climate Commission she felt it was the commission’s job to convince people of and convert them to the idea the climate change is real, but after doing that stuff for a few years she came to a very different conclusion.

She said she doesn’t worry about the skeptics anymore as they are pretty irrelevant and there was nothing she could tell them that would change their minds.

“What I think we need to do is empower, motivate and inspire people who are concerned and move them to action,” she said.

Professor Stanley sits on the board of the ABC and through that helps bring to Australian people the latest in science, a responsibility she would not entrust to the broader media. She encouraged those at the launch to continue to support the national broadcaster.

Our kids had little to do wiith climate change, but they will bear the brunt

C

limate change poses a significant and growing threat to public health. However it’s our children who, despite being the least responsible for causing it, unfairly bear the brunt of the impacts.

Foreword by
Professor Fiona Stanley

No Time For Games: Children’s Health and Climate Change collates scientific research on the child health effects of climate change, both in Australia and at a global level.

 

Doctors for the Environment Australia’s timely report demonstrates extreme weather events and increasing temperatures are already causing childhood illness in households throughout Australia.

Furthermore gastro-intestinal diseases, respiratory and heat related illnesses, and the physical and mental health impacts of floods, bushfires and droughts areall expected to rise.

This report makes it clear that Australia must be prepared to adapt our care of children to the threats our young people are experiencing as a result of climate change.

Our already stretched health services must immediately prepare for an inevitable increase in childhood sickness by training GPs and specialists, and educating the wider community, especially parents.

Crucially, federal and state governments must take immediate steps to curtail increasing temperatures by whatever means necessary. This includes contributing robust targets at the UN global climate change negotiations in Paris in 2015 which are aimed at setting strong emissions reduction targets to stall temperature rises.

Failure to act responsibly will have dire consequences for our children’s wellbeing, and the impacts of inadequate action for their children verge on the apocalyptic and are too scary to contemplate.

Conversely choosing now to limit further climate change offers a major opportunity to immediately improve the health of our children via reductions in air pollution and design of low carbon cities.

If we do nothing how will our generation, who had the chance to act but failed to do so, justify our inaction to future generations living on what will become an inhospitable planet?

As a parent, a grandmother and a public health professional with a long career in primary prevention, I strongly urge all Australians to get behind this report’s bold recommendations. Together we can and must help tackle climate change for the sake of our children, while there is still time.