Fwd: Health Enemy No.1: Climate Change..."has the potential to wipe out "all the gains that we've seen in global health"

[Edward Schreiber]

Thought about Sociatry after I received this.
Best,
Ed

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "doug wilson" <dougw at rowecenter.org>
> Date: May 20, 2009 12:03:27 PM EDT
> To: <dougw at rowecenter.org>
> Subject: Health Enemy No.1: Climate Change..."has the potential to  
> wipe out "all the gains that we've seen in global health"
> Reply-To: <dougw at rowecenter.org>
>
>
> Health Enemy No.1: Climate Change
>
> — By Jen Phillips | Fri May 15, 2009 3:57 PM PST
> The authors of a UK climate report issued this week say that  
> climate change is "the biggest global health problem of the 21st  
> century" and is likely killing people right now. The report was  
> created jointly by doctors and climatologists from The Lancet and  
> University College London. The report's authors assert that climate  
> change is inextricably linked to global health, and needs to be  
> treated as an emergency by policy-makers because it has the  
> potential to wipe out "all the gains that we've seen in global  
> health... improvements in child mortality, improvements in maternal  
> mortality... over the past 20 or 30 years."
>
> As Dr. David McCoy from University College London puts it, the  
> current situation is dire. "Even today there are literally hundreds  
> of thousands of people who are probably dying, most certainly  
> living in an undernourished situation, as a result of climate  
> change," says McCoy. "So it's really affecting the lives of people  
> today."
>
> Certainly that seems to be the case in Somalia where the fourth  
> year of drought, the worst in a decade, is killing cattle and  
> depleting food stores to the point that the nation is being pushed  
> toward famine. There's no confirmation yet that this specific  
> drought is climate-change related, but if global temperatures rise  
> more than 2 degrees centigrade as they're expected to, it will be  
> just the first drought of many. (For the record, Africans produce  
> far less greenhouse gas emissions per capita than North Americans.)  
> As the UK report forecasts, water and food shortages and extreme  
> weather patterns have the potential to kill far more people,  
> especially in developing nations, than the increased spread of  
> infectious diseases. Dr. McCoy says, "It was urgent 30 years ago.  
> And I don't think it'd be alarmist to say it's reached emergency  
> levels in terms of the kind of response we need today."
>
> http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/05/climate-change-no1- 
> global-health-threat
>
>
>
>
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