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Global Warming – The biggest enemy of public health

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Doctors and climatologists have recognized that the world is facing a global health crisis. A group of experts have recently warned that the warming of planet Earth is “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”.

The researchers said that there is a range of temperatures that a society can cope with. Once the range is crossed, infrastructures become overloaded. For example, the 2003 European heat wave, this killed up to 70,000 people. Yet by 2040, Europe’s average summer temperatures will equal those it experienced in 2003.

The doctors and researchers listed shortages of water and food, along with war and ecological collapse, as the most pressing health threats posed by climate change.

Health Consequences of Global Warming

Some of the health consequences of global warming are:

• Vector-borne diseases, such as dengue fever and malaria, which were once confined to warmer areas, will now move north and become more widespread as a result of increased temperatures.

• Heat waves will kill more people in more areas of the world (more than 70,000 people died during a heat wave in Europe in 2003).

• Crop yields will decline, leading to greater food insecurity in a world where 800 million already go to bed hungry each night.

• Water shortages will lead to more gastroenteritis and malnutrition, among other health problems.

• Extreme climatic events such as flash flooding due to changing rainfall patterns and melting ice sheets will hinder the world’s sewage systems, leading to diarrhea and other problems. Severe cyclones and hurricanes will also take more lives.

• More people living in cities will lead to a shortage of housing, which will lead to slums, which will lead to inadequate sanitation systems and increased vulnerability to extreme weather events.

The following figure shows there are both positive and negative health impact of global warming, but the negatives far outnumber the positives.

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Direction and magnitude of change of selected health impacts of climate change (confidence levels are assigned based on the IPCC guidelines on uncertainty).

Statistics

map 1
Map courtesy: The Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment.

This map shows total carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring for the world’s countries in 2000. Emissions are expressed in million metric tons of carbon.

map 2
Map courtesy: The Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment.

The health effects of global warming vary markedly at the regional scale. This map shows the estimated numbers of deaths per million people that could be attributed to global climate change in the year 2000.

Is Global warming being blamed wrongly?

There are scientists who are against the theory that global warming is the biggest health threat. One such scientist is Duane Gubler, director of Asia-Pacific Institute of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases in Honolulu. He opines that it is too easy to blame global warming for the problem of infectious diseases spreading, or re-emerging, in areas where they have been absent for a century or more. Gubler is of the opinion that public health emergencies are arising more often and in more places primarily for reasons other than global warming.

Global warming, a threat to health or not, is definitely a big problem. It is very essential to combat this problem.

We, as individuals can play an important role in curbing the health consequences of global warming. Our consumptive lifestyles are having dangerous impacts on other people around the world, especially the poor. We now have options now for leading more energy-efficient lives that should enable people to make better personal choices.

Via: Business Week

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