Climate Change and Health

Health is currently not prominent in climate policy. It is regarded as one of 33 climate sensitive sectors. However, arguments deriving from health and physiology, if properly communicated to climate decision makers, could play a strong role as a driving force to motivate them (and citizens) to accept new policies and new behaviors for the transformation towards a low carbon society. This is based on three sets of arguments, which have recently been corroborated by new evidence (since IPCC AR5) and highlights further the need to communicate this evidence and the policy options properly to the highest level of climate policy makers.

•There are huge health benefits from climate friendly policies and behaviors. Although the concept is not new, new evidence points to the large scope of known health benefits accruing from physical activity from walking and biking, insulated housing, low meat diets. Two recently identified co-benefits generate considerable additional health gains:

Large health gains from reducing local pollutants, particularly in low and middle income countries. Fine particles and black carbon have recently been recognized as “climate active pollutants”. Black carbon is of particular interest for climate policy, as reducing its emissions leads to a fast reduction of levels in the atmosphere.

Recent population projections until 2100 significantly exceed previous UN estimates. Gerland et al. publishing their modeling results in Science 2014 , project a 2100 population size of between 9.3 to 12.6 billion. This urgently calls for even greater efforts in voluntary family planning, hence reaping even larger the linked health benefits accruing to mothers and their fewer children.

•There are clear limits to society’s capacity to adapt to the projected health impact of climate change. This applies to some extent in a 2°C, but definitely in a 4°C warmer world, even given maximal resource allocation to the task.

•Heat stress leads to a reduction in work productivity in a warmer world, particularly in a 4° warmer climate. This concerns mainly the large populations in (sub-) tropical and arid areas and applies both to outdoor work, such as farming and construction and to indoor industrial production in non-air conditioned buildings.