Our Work Health & Energy Independent Australia: The madness of a gas-led recovery and what you can do about it

Independent Australia: The madness of a gas-led recovery and what you can do about it

Australia is particularly vulnerable to some of the worst impacts of climate change with extreme heat, drought, drying rivers, coastal erosion and changing patterns of disease– threatening health, livelihoods and the social fabric, write Drs Graeme McLeay and Ingo Weber.  While paying lip service to the urgency underpinning the Paris Agreement to keep average global temperatures to below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial times, Australia is embarking zealously on a course to promote and profit from the export and use of fossil fuels, most recently with calls for a gas-led “recovery”. The argument though that gas is a transition fuel and clean is disingenuous. 

DEA has this week launched a video message, warning that a gas-led pandemic economic recovery would be hazardous to health and cost lives. 
The DEA members speaking out on the effects of gas, highlight how renewable energy technologies are readily available to us and don’t cost our health or the health of the planet.
Add your voice to the video message via an online petition.

About the co-authors

Dr Graeme McLeay is a retired anaesthetist and a member of Doctors for the Environment Australia. 

 Dr Ingo Weber is a qualified rural GP who took up anaesthetics whilst overseas and now works as a full-time anaesthetist at the Lyell McEwin Hospital. He lectures at both South Australian medical schools on the health impacts of climate change.  

Read the full article published on 26 June 2020 in Independent Australia