The Responsibility Is Ours Alone

 

Today is Children’s Environmental Health Day! Sponsored by the Children’s Environmental Health Network, we’ve covered this campaign before (in 2018, 2019, and 2020) on The PediaBlog:

Focused on action and equity, the goal of #CEHDay is to collectively increase the visibility of children’s environmental health issues while empowering individuals and organizations to take action on behalf of children nationwide. We believe that all children have the right to healthy environments in which to thrive. Environmental health for all kids means clean air, clean water, products free from harmful chemicals.

 

We’ve spent each day this week on The PediaBlog exploring environmental topics that impact the health of our kids. While we recognize steps made to make the environment cleaner and safer — grandparents today may remember the not-so-good-ol’-days when Pittsburghers referred to their city as “Hell with the lid off” due to thick and unrelenting air pollution from all the steel mills powered by coal-fired generators — looks can sometimes be deceiving. As the petrochemical hub in the Ohio Valley comes to life in the next year or so, we will smell more stinky air, not less, and hear about more babies pooping plastic. Regional greenhouse gas emissions are also expected to increase significantly — the Shell ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, PA is permitted to release more than 2 million tons (that’s 2 megatons for anyone keeping score) — of greenhouse gases every year (the equivalent of more than 400,000 additional cars on the road annually, according to the EPA). It’s no wonder our children in southwestern Pennsylvania, nationwide, and around the world have become anxious about living on a degraded planet with an unstable climate system doling out more extreme weather.

The kids are definitely not alright with what is happening to the planet. Pediatrician Dr. Ruth Etzel told Joyce Frieden it’s time to follow children’s lead on climate change:

“It’s the children who are sounding the alarm, but many adults are hitting the snooze button,” she said. “The adults, such as government leaders from hundreds of different countries, are continuing to make decisions with their own self-interest in mind — usually their own term of office. And the children are demanding that they take the long-term view. Because decisions that they make today will affect many generations of children to come … The time for action is now.”

 

In just a few weeks, leaders from around the world will gather in Glasgow, Scotland for global climate negotiations to urgently divert humanity’s current path aimed straight toward climate catastrophe. This week 450 organizations representing 45 million health professionals worldwide, including pediatricians, delivered an open letter to world leaders planning to attend the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26):

Dear Heads of State and National Delegations,

The climate crisis is the single biggest health threat facing humanity. As health professionals and health workers, we recognize our ethical obligation to speak out about this rapidly growing crisis that could be far more catastrophic and enduring than the COVID-19 pandemic. We urge governments to live up to their responsibilities by protecting their citizens, neighbours, and future generations from the climate crisis.

Wherever we deliver care, in our hospitals, clinics and communities around the world, we are already responding to the health harms caused by climate change.

Examples include:

• Air pollution, most significantly from burning fossil fuels which also drives climate change, is causing more than seven million premature deaths each year, that’s 13 deaths every minute. Forest fires, waste burning, and harmful agricultural practices are also polluting our air and lungs;

• Changes in the weather and climate are causing increases in food-borne, water-borne and vector-borne diseases;

• Increasingly frequent extreme weather events including heatwaves, storms and floods are taking the lives of thousands, disrupting the lives of millions more each year, and impacting our own healthcare facilities. This year alone, major climate change-related health disasters occurred in China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Canada, Germany, Belgium and many other nations;

• Food systems are increasingly disrupted by extreme weather which is exacerbating food insecurity, hunger, and malnutrition;

• Rising sea levels are destroying homes and livelihoods, which are critical to supporting people’s health;

• Climate change impacts are taking a serious toll on peoples’ mental health, causing post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, and worsening existing conditions.

 

45 million is a lot of doctors and nurses, therapists and technicians, medical researchers and educators, who experience the impact of climate change on health everyday. Frieden lists ten specific actions contained in the prescription — a dose of reality (but also hope) all world leaders would be wise to swallow:

• Commit to a healthy recovery: Commit to a healthy, green, and just recovery from COVID-19

• Our health is not negotiable: Place health and social justice at the heart of the U.N. climate talks

• Harness the health benefits of climate action: Prioritize those climate interventions with the largest health, social, and economic gains

• Build health resilience to climate risks: Build climate-resilient and environmentally sustainable health systems and facilities, and support health adaptation and resilience across sectors

• Create energy systems that protect and improve climate and health: Guide a just and inclusive transition to renewable energy to save lives from air pollution, particularly from coal combustion; end energy poverty in households and healthcare facilities

• Reimagine urban environments, transportation, and mobility: Promote sustainable, healthy urban design and transport systems, with improved land use, access to green and blue public space, and priority for walking, cycling, and public transportation

• Protect and restore nature as the foundation of our health: Protect and restore natural systems, the foundations for healthy lives, sustainable food systems, and livelihoods

• Promote healthy, sustainable, and resilient food systems: Promote sustainable and resilient food production and more affordable, nutritious diets that deliver on both climate and health outcomes

• Finance a healthier, fairer, and greener future to save lives: Transition towards a wellbeing economy

• Listen to the health community and prescribe urgent climate action: Mobilize and support the health community on climate action

 

Editors of more than 220 public health and medical journals around the world sounded the same alarm last month:

Health is already being harmed by global temperature increases and the destruction of the natural world, a state of affairs health professionals have been bringing attention to for decades. The science is unequivocal: a global increase of 1.5° C above the pre-industrial average and the continued loss of biodiversity risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse. Despite the world’s necessary preoccupation with Covid-19, we cannot wait for the pandemic to pass to rapidly reduce emissions.

Reflecting the severity of the moment, this editorial appears in health journals across the world. We are united in recognizing that only fundamental and equitable changes to societies will reverse our current trajectory.

 

The editorial offers a prescription for doctors and other health care providers, urging them to “heal thyself”:

As health professionals, we must do all we can to aid the transition to a sustainable, fairer, resilient, and healthier world. Alongside acting to reduce the harm from the environmental crisis, we should proactively contribute to global prevention of further damage and to action on the root causes of the crisis. We must hold global leaders to account and continue to educate others about the health risks of the crisis. We must join in the work to achieve environmentally sustainable health systems before 2040, recognizing that this will mean changing clinical practice. Health institutions have already divested more than $42 billion of assets from fossil fuels; others should join them.

 

Today, Children’s Environmental Health Day, all of us must recognize the connection between the environment and health, and accept our responsibility to protect the health and well-being of our children and the planet that supports us.

The responsibility is ours and ours alone. There are no excuses left. There is no more time.

 

source http://www.thepediablog.com/2021/10/14/the-responsibility-is-ours-alone/