Climate change is a public health emergency

Sept. 30, 2022

This column is an opinion by Andrew Lodge, the medical director at Klinic Community Health, a community health centre in downtown Winnipeg. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

In the aftermath of Fiona and the terrible wake it left on Canada's east coast, there is grit, resilience, and rebuilding. We are also left with yet another stark reminder of a changing climate and the havoc that awaits the planet and our species.

We need to face the undeniable. Fiona cannot be viewed in isolation, but instead as one data point — albeit a dramatic and calamitous one for those afflicted — in an inexorable trend toward an increasingly unstable biosphere.

• Nova Scotia premier asks Ottawa for more military support for Fiona cleanup

The scientific evidence is consistent; the research is wide-ranging and generated by a broad base of disciplines. 

And it is clear: we are headed toward climate upheaval.

As United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres declared recently, "The disruption to our climate and our planet is already worse than we thought, and it is moving faster than predicted."

With that comes a threat to our very survival. Climate change is a public health emergency.

It needs to be treated as such.

Canada largely spared, so far

Despite some notable and catastrophic exceptions, such as Fiona and wildfires to the west [Website editor: floods?  heat dome deaths?], Canada has been largely spared the increasing human suffering experienced by growing segments of the global community. Heat waves, worsening storm seasons, drought, floods and the like are reshaping the meteorological parameters of normal.

For Canadians, this fortuitous buffer will likely not last much longer.

The false idol we have erected, deifying human beings and our supremacy over the natural world, now threatens to unglue social cohesion and jeopardize life as we know it.

Simply put, human health and environmental health do not exist in silos. Instead, we are beginning to understand what the ancients knew intuitively; that all life is inextricably entwined and thus interdependent.

• Parliament's climate debate is stuck in the past

The idiocy of relying on market forces — the very mantra which got us into this mess — to see our way out is as reckless as it is nihilistic. 

If this sounds dystopian, it should. The window in which to deliberately respond with some semblance of proactivity is rapidly closing. In some instances, we have likely moved past tipping point thresholds and so must shift focus to mitigation instead of prevention. The recent "United in Science" report, authored through the United Nations' World Meteorological Association, as well as the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publication released earlier this year, reflect mountains of research that paint a dire picture of our trajectory.

Everywhere we look — historically unparalleled floods in Pakistan; rapid deep-seated changes in the polar regions; increasingly violent storms like Fiona — real-time examples abound, confirming what has been warned for decades.

The evidence surrounds us. The danger is real and imminent. Direct health impacts are predictable enough. Examples include widespread disease outbreaks, like waterborne infections now emerging in Pakistan, and more insidious, non-infectious conditions, such respiratory disease secondary to airborne pollution and wildfire smoke.

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More perilous in the longer term are threats to fundamental social determinants of health. These are already occurring and will be both pervasive and very likely irreversible in many instances. Food and water insecurity through drought, soil degradation, and diminishing freshwater supply. Mass migration and intensification in conflict as a result of resource scarcity. Increasingly inhospitable human habitats.

Transformative measures are needed now. Politicians and policy makers on all levels must act in line with the best research available. Reliance on purely voluntary measures, much like waiting for entirely market-driven solutions, has proven disastrously ineffectual. 

Alarming future fast becoming present

Similar to the imperative forced by the COVID-19 pandemic, new legislation reflecting the emergent nature of climate change is required to make difficult decisions, measures that focus on the medium and long-term, as opposed to incoherent short-term fluff too often favoured by politicians in exchange for votes. Prioritization of immediate economic concerns conceals an alarming future which is fast becoming the present-day.

As a simple example, we need meaningful incentivization of sectors pursuing zero emissions, coupled with aggressive curtailment of harmful and unnecessary practices such as single-use plastics. Incremental measures may not be enough to prevent future disasters in the near future, but they will have the effect of limiting warming in the long run, thereby improving conditions for climate stabilization.

We saw rapid and massive mobilization in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These were messy and at times disjointed, but also revealed many examples of highly effective, agile strategies deployed with timeliness.

Of course, the turmoil caused by COVID-19 pales in comparison to the seismic impacts of widespread climate change. But it can nevertheless be viewed as a difference in degree and not kind, and many lessons are transferable.

We need to recognize what is becoming rapidly apparent. Our own health and well-being are wrapped up in the health of the planet. 

All are in great jeopardy. The emergency is already upon us.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Lodge

Freelance contributor

Dr. Andrew Lodge is medical director at Klinic Community Health, a community health centre in downtown Winnipeg, and a clinical assistant professor at the University of Manitoba's Max Rady College of Medicine.

[Top photo: This drone photo shows the extensive damage caused by post-tropical storm Fiona in Port aux Basques, N.L. Fiona is yet another stark reminder of the havoc that awaits the planet and our species, writes Andrew Lodge. (Yan Theoret/CBC News)]