A call for leadership over climate change, health, and human survival

In June 2016 severe weather events struck parts of NSW and Tasmania, characterised by the loss of several human lives, flash flooding, coastal erosion and considerable damage to coastal structures, including homes. Animals also suffered, as did people close to them, connected emotionally, economically, or in both ways. Sheep, cattle, bananas and even two horses in Western Sydney, used by disabled people died (one horse used by the disabled was rescued).

Some climate scientists still propose that no single event can be attributed to climate change, but an increasing number (including Kevin Trenberth) reverse the argument, pointing out that the climate is in a new state, and all such events are influenced by the hotter wetter atmosphere. 

Irrespective of their case, we know that the sea level is rising and its rate of increase is accelerating, as oceans warm and expand and as ice melts. Only very aggressive climate action can save parts of many of the world’s coastal cities from inundation by century’s end (including Miami, New York and New Orleans). 

Unfortunately, sea level rise is far from the end of the problems we face.

As I wrote in an article ("Sounding the alarm: health in the Anthropocene") currently under review: 

"Two recent papers and a commentary warn that parts of the Middle East and North Africa, especially near the Persian Gulf will become virtually uninhabitable under some plausible climate change scenarios by 2100, due to the combination of rising temperatures and humidity. Another, led by the director of the Max Planck center for chemistry in Germany, anticipates that: 

“climate change and increasing hotweather extremes in the Middle East and North Africa, a region subject to economic recession, political turbulence and upheaval, may exacerbate humanitarian hardship and contribute to migration”.

Australian non-leadership

Following the Sydney storm, NSW Emergencies Services Minister, the Hon David Elliott was asked on News Radio if he thought there might be a pattern emerging. After all, the world has recently experienced drought, fires, other floods, heatwaves, unusual lightning, coral bleaching, marine heatwaves..

Mr Elliott, who in 2012 attempted to ridicule Climate Councilor Tim Flannery about climate change (see facebook post to right), evaded the question, replying that he is “no weatherman” (listen at the 4 minute mark). 

It is good that some in the media are finally raising the issue of climate change at the time of the latest tragedy, but lamentable that people in high office with a duty of care to lead on this issue (including Barnaby Joyce the temporary Australian Federal Minister for Agriculture) somehow think their background as a lawyer or an accountant qualifies them to understand the science better. What is the point of publicly funding science if that advice is then regarded with contempt by our "leaders"?

Mr Elliott has a background in the army and as a peacekeeper. Encouragingly, many in the military are connecting the dots between climate change, ethnic divisions, population growth and conflict.

But evasion such as his is not good enough. We instead need genuine leadership such as from UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres to slow the rate of climate change. Its current trajectory, unchecked, will ruin the health and well-being of our entire species. If we take the Paris Climate Agreement seriously we might yet rescue civilisation. But as Kevin Anderson has repeatedly pointed out, it too contains considerable wishful thinking. We thus need real leadership, at all levels, but especially the top.

Health, Environment, Population

Invited lecture to Department of Public Health and Environment, 

World Health Organization

My slides are now accessible here.

August 26, 2013

Dr Margaret Chan (W.H.O. Director General) recently criticized “Big Soda” (and other “Bigs”) as driving forces which generate non-communicable diseases. This criticism could be extended not just to Big Carbon, but big Capitalism too, and for many additional adverse health outcomes. But when it comes to the nexus between population, environment, development and health, it is not just capitalists and the Right who have a narrow vision; so too does the Left, which for at least two centuries has argued that redistribution is not only necessary but sufficient to solve poverty and resource scarcity.

This lecture will attempt to review and explain the decline of understanding and interest in Limits to Growth and population growth; the nascent but fragile revival of interest in these issues, and why these issues are central to global development, security and health: past, present and future.

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This is a preliminary meeting which might lead to the establishment of a WHO- led working group to re-examine these issues; hopefully to re-consider the orthodox view which has dominated the Right since about 1980, the Left since at least 1800 and academia since about 1985.

For example: "The Population Association of America, representing US demographers and population specialists .. questioned the basis of the White House policy (at the 1984 Population Conference in Mexico City): ("the PAA prepared a statement commenting that the authors of the draft report was "either unaware of 50 years of demographic research, or deliberately ignored it" .. "Dr Sheldon Segal, the co-recipient of the 1984 UN population prize also questioned the US position.")

Finkle, J. L. & Crane, B. 1985. Ideology and politics at Mexico City: The United States at the 1984 International Conference on Population. Population and Development Review, 11, 1-28. (footnote 61).

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Prof Colin Butler is funded by the Australian Research Council, as a “Future Fellow”, a four year research grant. His topic is called “Health and Sustainability: Australia in a Global Context”. He has published many articles on topics relevant to these themes, against the mainstream current, including “Overpopulation, overconsumption and economics" (Lancet, 1994) and "Human carrying capacity and human health" in PLoS Medicine (open access).

In 2009 he was named one of 100 doctors for the planet. He was lead author for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment chapter on future human well-being in the scenarios working group, where he collaborated closely with Carlos Corvalan. He is trying to make "Limits to Growth and Health" a legitimate and central issue for global public health. He is also a contributing author to the IPCC health chapter.