February 2008
Whether Or Not To Have Better Weather
Recent headlines asking "is climate change making us sick?" are nothing new. Indeed, we at Pro Enviro have already run an article on the subject in the August 2007 Newsletter. However, this mainly reflected global issues and the disproportionate impact that climate change would have on the developing world. The current question posed is directed towards us in the UK and could present an immediate danger, a great deal more serious than first thought.
Excepting the obvious long term impacts as outlined in the Stern Report, the British Medical Journal has published an article reporting on some of the health effects to be expected in the UK following global warming. These include increasing rates of cardio-respiratory disease, diarrhoea and insect borne diseases such as malaria.
Dr Hugh Montgomery, director of the Institute for Human Health and Performance at University College London, noted that "we are already witnessing the effects of climate change on human health." He continued: "Each of us is, in effect, moving 6km (4 miles) south a year or 60km a decade. The result will be fewer deaths from colds and flu, but more from strokes and heart attacks because of the heat. Global warming means a higher baseline temperature from which there will be more surges and extreme events."
The events of August 2003 were perhaps a foretaste of what is to come in the UK, when 2,000 people were killed in record temperatures and up to 35,000 perished in Europe. The Times reports that by 2080, this freak summer can be expected each and every year. With Department of Health studies showing that there were on average 75 extra deaths for every one degree rise in temperature in June of 2006, the country is facing a disaster; and as is the case all over the world, the most vulnerable – the young, the old and the weak, suffer most.
Whereas deaths directly related to increases in temperature kill people through placing too great a strain on the heart, it is those deaths annexed to this rise that are most catastrophic. Pollution trapped in cities places strain on the respiratory systems of even the healthiest. In fact, Beijing will be closing down a swathe of industries in, and surrounding the city in order to minimise their impact on the 2008 Olympics. Professor of health protection at the University of East Anglia, Paul Hunter, warns:
"Climate change poses a significant risk of the introduction of vector-borne diseases into Europe and indeed there is evidence that such change has already happened. Several vector-borne diseases not previously described in Europe have appeared, including chikungunya [a virus carried by Asian tiger mosquito that causes fever, headache and joint pain]. There was an outbreak in Italy last summer."
Whilst people may question whether it is not better to have a warmer climate in the UK, irrespective of the change in other countries, it is worth noting that the Mediterranean style future painted in many tabloids is further from the truth than they would have you imagine. According to Professor Ian Crute, director of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council’s Rothamsted Unit, "don’t expect [to] ever have acres of sunflower fields or olive groves,"
Moreover, studies from the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency show that only 1000 people die from the cold each year, while twice that many die from the heat. Also, the estimates from death from heat stroke or similar causes listed on death certificates are likely to underestimate greatly increased mortality from heat stress, as most of the large statistical jumps in death rates during very hot periods are likely to be attributed to respiratory disease or some cause other than heat stroke. The prognosis is far from good as we go about collecting more wood for our own funeral pyre.
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