Climate and other forms of environmental change, disasters and public health

Abstract

Human caused climate change is increasingly severe and is likely to worsen for many decades to come. This has many implications for disasters. Climate change, will, for example, generate more intense storms (though perhaps occurring less frequently), droughts, crop failure and further food price rises. Flow on effects from these events are likely to include additional social unrest and conflict. The inexorable rise of sea level, as the oceans warm and the ice melts, is of particular concern as the century progresses. In combination with other environmental and social factors the numerous effects of climate change have profound, deeply disturbing implications for many forms of disaster, with adverse effects to physical and mental health on a large scale. Climate change will intensify, even if strenuous global attempts are made to decarbonise the global economy, such as by energy conservation and a rapid shift away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy. Ingenuity, technology, cheap and abundant energy, together with large-scale co-operation, global leadership and civil society are powerful counterforces to the harm that disasters cause, even in low-income countries. But progress in recent decades is seen by too many people as unstoppable, and has generated dangerous complacency. While humanity must continue to apply its ingenuity and co-operation to relieve disasters, an even higher priority should be to the slowing and then reversal of the accumulating greenhouse gases that are changing global weather patterns, lifting food prices, raising the sea level, and in many other ways increasing disaster risk. In sequence and in combination, these changes could engulf civilisation itself, unless there is major reform. Show more