Who Are We?
In other words, we are health professionals, worldwide, who see their work and expertise as the prevention of needless death, suffering and disease, both now and in the future. And we are everyone who would like to urge their health care providers to get involved in doing something about global climate change.We are doctors, nurses, health colleagues and anyone else who agrees with Al Gore, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, eminent senior climate change scientists such as James Hansen, John Holdren, Hans Schellnhuber, and Bill Hare, that we are beyond dangerous interference with the climate system, and have reached a state of planetary emergency. We are health care and other professionals looking to add our voices to the critical negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) for a follow-up agreement to the Kyoto Protocol (Kyoto2), due in 2012. We fear that this is the last chance to prevent planetary catastrophe from uncontrolled global climate change. "If there's no action before 2012 [when the Kyoto Protocol runs out], that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment." The medical and other health professions have uniquely valuable skills and attributes to bring to the understanding and assessment of, and response to, the global climate change emergency. Contributing our intelligence, training, protocols, and credibility will help governments and other institutions address the planetary emergency much more effectively, on a risk assessment and catastrophic risk aversion basis, this being simply the practice of good health care. Our professional medical and other health associations have been exemplary over many years in recognizing the potentially disastrous impacts from global climate change, and in recommending to governments that they implement the terms of the Kyoto Protocol. We nevertheless find ourselves today facing a planetary emergency. Global climate change, on track to become the worst environmental and public health disaster ever, has already started to cause deprivation and death amongst the most climate change vulnerable and innocent regional populations. Doctors Warn on Climate Failure "Failure to agree on a new UN climate deal in December will bring a 'global health catastrophe,' say 18 of the world's professional medical organisations. Writing in The Lancet and the British Medical Journal, they urge doctors to 'take a lead' on the climate issue. In a separate editorial, the journals say that people in poor tropical nations will suffer the worst impacts. They argue that curbing climate change would have other benefits such as more healthy diets and cleaner air. Referring to national leaders and the UN negotiations, 'Should their response be weak, the results for international health could be catastrophic.'" CLIMATE CHANGE EMERGENCY MEDICAL RESPONSE is a growing resource for doctors and other healing and health care professionals who understand the urgent need to build a global medical voice calling for the protection of human health and survival in the face of a large and rapidly increasing risk of regional and global climate change catastrophe. By providing this up-to-date resource base from the peer-reviewed published science, we especially want to help health care professionals who live and work in climate change vulnerable regions, and those who want to advocate for these vulnerable populations. Please share this website with colleagues in the health and helping professions. (For example, this could include mental health professionals, or leaders in religious institutions.) What Is Special About This Website?This site is designed to be a one-stop global climate change health care resource centre to help individuals and organizations respond to this unprecedented emergency.We propose that global climate change be addressed first and foremost as the human population health and survival issue of the age if not all time. The World Health Organization recently acknowledged that this is not happening. The general approach of climate scientists and civil society NGOs is to play down the full terrible extent of committed impacts and risks. This site takes the ethical medical approach of addressing the worst risks head on. At present, the risks to human populations their survival, their health and their livelihoods (in other words, their human rights) are not being given high priority in the assessment and mitigation of global climate change. There is no agreed-to definition on what constitutes "dangerous interference with the climate system," and there are no medical or health advocacy organizations supporting Al Gore, Ban Ki-moon, or James Hansen in declaring that we are in a state of planetary emergency. Agriculture and food security are not listed among the top IPCC Reasons for Concern and there is no organization working to correct this. Though inevitable, additional warming from carbon feedbacks (when the planet emits more greenhouse gases as a result of global warming) is not included in the IPCC assessment, but there is no organization working to correct this, either. The +2ēC target is intolerable in light of the human rights of today's most climate change vulnerable populations and all future generations (even though it will now take Herculean efforts to stay below a 2ēC global temperature increase). This website addresses major gaps in the communication of the science and the risks of global climate change. It looks at the state of the biosphere as a planetary emergency health problem. It provides a risk assessment basis on which to advocate effectively for remedial policies at all levels of government, including the UN. This website also serves as an appeal to health professionals to become involved, urgently and actively, in responding to this planetary emergency. We have a rapidly closing window of opportunity within which to respond successfully (a few years at the most). "...[T]he time for equivocation is over. Climate change is the defining challenge of our age. The science is clear; climate change is happening, the impact is real. The time to act is now." CLIMATE CHANGE EMERGENCY MEDICAL RESPONSE is the work of retired family physician, Dr. Peter D. Carter, of British Columbia, Canada, who for many years was involved in environmental health policy development with Canadian NGOs. He is assisted by GreenHeart Education. Return from Who Are We? to Climate Change Emergency Homepage
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