Parents, grandparents and concerned adults: Sign the open letter
Climate change is not only an environmental issue but also a major health emergency, especially for our children. Dr Sallie Forrest from Doctors for the Environment Australia asks you to support their call for the Health Minister to attend the Paris climate talks this December and put the health of our children front and centre.
The Health Minister Sussan Ley should be included in the list of Australian leaders attending the upcoming global negotiations on climate change in Paris to ensure the health of our children is given priority.
Australia is already seeing changing weather patterns due to climate change, and our health is suffering the harmful effects. But it’s our children who will suffer most from a warming world even though they have the least ability to act.
Existing higher temperatures have been linked to increases in premature births and diseases such as asthma and diarrhoeal illness, and more bushfires and floods have already had severe psychological effects on Australian children.
Doctors for the Environment Australia highlighted the medical findings and called for action in a recent report, No Time for Games: Children’s Health and Climate Change, which was launched by former Australian of the Year and child health specialist Professor Fiona Stanley.
But with only weeks to go before this crucial Paris meeting, our leaders have failed to act on expert advice and Australia is not sending a senior health representative.
We’re hoping they will listen to you. Join our call by adding YOUR voice to our open letter below.
Further climate change is preventable – if we act NOW.
We will deliver the open letter to Parliament House, Canberra, in time for the global talks in Paris this December.
| Dear Prime Minister Turnbull, Health Minister Ley and the Australian Government,
As doctors, parents, grandparents and concerned adults of Australia, we ask that the Health Minister Sussan Ley attends the Paris meeting of world leaders on climate change this December. This will ensure Australia and the world recognises health as a central issue of these important negotiations, alongside environment and economic considerations. We request that Minister Ley supports outcomes at these negotiations that will safeguard the health of current and future generations of children. We recognise greenhouse gas emission reduction pledges throughout the world are still insufficient to keep the global rise in temperatures to under two degrees; accordingly we must leave at least 80% of coal, oil and gas reserves in the ground and move to low-emission technologies more quickly. The World Health Organization states that climate change is the greatest health threat facing humanity this century. Doctors for the Environment Australia warns that a warming world is particularly a problem for children in their recent report No Time for Games: Children’s Health and Climate Change, which was launched by former Australian of the Year and child health specialist Professor Fiona Stanley. More bushfires, floods and storms have already had severe and ongoing psychological effects on Australian children. Higher temperatures, which we are now seeing, have been linked to increases in premature births and hospital attendances for infectious diarrhoea, fever, asthma, dehydration and heat exhaustion. If we do nothing, our children will more likely suffer from infectious diseases, the effects of air pollution and respiratory allergies, and in the longer term, compromised food quality, water scarcity, economic and social disruption and the effects of population displacement. Beyond two degrees of warming, health impacts threaten to become increasingly unmanageable. It has been recognized internationally, including by the US Government, that limiting climate change offers a major opportunity to also directly improve the health of our children via reductions in air pollution and design of low carbon cities. Prevention is urgent. We have the technology, financial resources and knowledge to deal with climate change but vested interests are obstructing meaningful progress. Acting on climate change is now purely a political issue and our leaders need to act. Minister Ley’s attendance at the Paris meeting would show that Australia is placing the health of our children as a number one priority. Yours sincerely, |
Dr Sallie Forrest is medical doctor and heads Doctors for the Environment Australia’s Policy and Advocacy. She has a Masters of Science in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is a public health registrar and the lead author of the report No Time for Games: Children’s Health and Climate Change.
Max Thomas
November 20, 2015 at 3:41 am
Diagnosing the weather
"Australia is already seeing changing weather patterns due to climate change, and our health is suffering the harmful effects." That's a pretty gloomy diagnosis. I imagine medical workers soon discover that appearances can be very deceptive and that premature conclusions may lead to poor outcomes and misallocation of scarce resources. That human activity is responsible for global warming and already observable changes in the atmosphere and the oceans etc, is beyond dispute. However, the Australian Academy of Science is little more circumspect than 'Doctors for the Environment' when it comes to extrapolation of these observations to a high level of confidence about their specific impacts on climate, much less the weather. A precautionary approach does seem prudent, but adopting alarmist language in an attempt to achieve a political outcome, I contend, is not in the best interests of science.