Climate Change Poses Threats to Children’s Health Worldwide

The health effects of climate change will be unevenly distributed and children will be among those especially harmed, according to a new report from the medical journal The Lancet.

Children in Hilltop Park in Los Angeles this summer. 

The report compared human health consequences under two scenarios: one in which the world meets the commitments laid out in the Paris Agreement and reins in emissions so that increases in global temperatures remain “well below 2 degrees Celsius” by the end of the century, and one in which it does not.

The report, published Wednesday, found that failing to limit emissions would lead to health problems caused by infectious diseases, worsening air pollution, rising temperatures and malnutrition.

“With every degree of warming, a child born today faces a future where their health and well-being will be increasingly impacted by the realities and dangers of a warmer world,” said Dr. Renee N. Salas, a clinical instructor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School and lead author of the United States policy brief that accompanied the report.

Read the story from The New York Times by Kendra Pierre-Louis - “Climate Change Poses Threats to Children’s Health Worldwide.”

Climate Change already Damaging Health of Millions

The findings, outlined in The Lancet medical journal, demonstrate the various ways climate change is already affecting the health of people across the planet.

The report highlights the urgent
need to cut greenhouse gas
 emissions

Leading doctors, academics and policy professionals from 24 organisations – including the University of Exeter – worked on the report.

“Human health is vulnerable to climate change and associated changes in air quality,” said Professor Peter Cox, from the University of Exeter.

“This vulnerability is exacerbated by economic inequalities and ageing populations.

“Action to halt climate change is a huge opportunity to improve human health and wellbeing.”

Read the Science and Technology Research News story - “Climate Change already Damaging Health of Millions.”

The UK Health Alliance wants public health emergency on climate change

The UK Health Alliance on Climate Change brings together the voices of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals within the UK to advocate for action to combat and prevent climate change, emphasising the substantial co benefits to health of tackling climate change in a fair and equitable way.

The founding members of the Alliance include a range of royal medical and nursing colleges, the Royal Society of Medicine, the British Medical Association, The Lancet, and The BMJ. They are coming together to communicate the relationship between health and climate change to government and the health profession.

To help achieve this, it is building a core secretariat, and is currently seeking applications for a motivated and professional individual with strong project management and communications skills to act as its Policy and Communications Officer. They will have a diverse range of responsibilities, including the implementation of the Alliance’s advocacy efforts, the execution of its external communications strategy, and the drafting of its policy and technical documents.

Read The BMJ (formerly The British Medical Journal) story - “The UK Health Alliance on Climate Change.”

Abbott's wind symdrome vs Doctors' global climate plea

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s Tony Abbott and his crossbench allies pursue wind farms for creating a health hazard for which medical authorities say there is no evidence, the leading medical research journal in the world – The Lancet – has commissioned research that finds climate change “threatens to undermine the last half-century of gains in development and global health”.

The Lancet Commission on Climate Change involves a collaboration of leading medical health researchers in combination with experts in climate change impacts and emission reduction options and policies.

Read the Climate Spectator story - “Abbott's wind syndrome vs Doctors' global climate plea”.