The global climate is changing, and faster than ever before. The burning of fossil fuels is adding alarmingly to the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which acts as a radiation blanket causing average global temperature to rise and changing the world's climate. We can reasonably expect more droughts, floods, extreme weather events, and for the sea level to rise.
Figure 1.
Kristie L Ebi, Joel B Smith, Ian Burton
Taylor and Francis, £69, pp 320 ISBN 90 5809 686 6
Rating: ★★★
All of these will have significant impacts on human health. Indeed, the World Health Organization has estimated that more than 150 000 people in developing countries are already dying each year from the effects of climate change.
Without immediate and dramatic reductions in global carbon dioxide emissions things will almost certainly get worse. And since there is no evidence that any such measures are in hand we should be relieved to learn from this book that public health professionals are teaming up with climate scientists to find better ways to deal with the anarchy that is about to be unleashed on us by our ever more angry atmosphere. We should feel comforted that early warning systems will be set up to detect new epidemics of vector borne infections, that there are plans to take children and elderly people—who are the most vulnerable to heat stress—to special air conditioned cooling centres so that they can survive heat waves, and that emergency workers will know what to do should a river of mud come smashing through a village.
Integration of Public Heath with Adaptation to Climate Change challenges us with some seriously unsettling realities, however. It examines a diverse selection of public health case studies to see what lessons can be learnt for adapting to climate change. And it highlights the need to strengthen our decrepit public health infrastructure along with the need to place human health within a broader ecological context. The role of poverty in creating vulnerability to climate change impacts is well recognised. High income, energy profligate countries are responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions but those living in low income, energy thrifty countries will suffer most of the adverse health impacts.
This book was written before Hurricane Katrina ravaged the southern seaboard of the world's most carbon hungry nation and, although the links between hurricane activity and global warming are uncertain, it is nevertheless remarkably prescient. After having been besieged by media images of bloated black bodies decomposing in the toxic swamp that has replaced large parts of New Orleans, President George W Bush, speaking from a church pulpit in Washington, said, “As we clear away the debris of a hurricane, let us also clear away the legacy of inequality.”
This time our planet was teaching a lesson about equity that even the architects of North America's economic apartheid appear to have understood. As global temperatures rise there will be many more lessons on the relation between our economy and our ecology.