The National Climate Risk Assessment (NCRA) report vividly describes the serious impacts of climate change. It outlines how global heating is harming human health, the health of our environment and impacting almost every aspect of our lives, including food and water security, global supply chains, the economy and national security. 

As health professionals, Doctors for the Environment Australia takes the projections in the report very seriously, especially as they echo concerns that we have been raising as an organisation for many years.

Notable concerns in the report are:-

• An increase in deaths from heat, with estimates of increased heat-related mortality of 444% for Sydney and 423% for Darwin at +3.0°C of global heating.
• Increasing frequency of bushfires, with associated increases in bushfire smoke and air pollution, causing respiratory, cardiovascular and mental health complications and deaths.
• Increasing risk of infectious diseases like influenza, bacterial infections and diseases spread by mosquitoes, like dengue fever and Japanese encephalitis virus.
• A severe risk to water security, with declines in rainfall and stream-flow, combined with increased drought and increased risk of black water events.
• Severe mental health impacts as our communities are forced to deal with increased climate pollution, extreme heat and severe weather.

The report also describes how our communities will experience multiple climate related events, such as heatwaves, fires, droughts, floods, severe storms and sea level rise and the combination of these will cause a compounding of impacts pushing health infrastructure, emergency services and defense to breaking point.

The report should serve as a wake up call for anyone still clinging to climate denialism or a business as usual approach to climate risks, alerting them to take this threat seriously and prepare for what we know is coming.

More importantly it should serve as a signal to stop making things worse by adding to the burden of greenhouse gas emissions. The best form of adaptation is mitigation, and this report should be understood by all parliamentarians of the need to quit fossil fuels and move to renewable energy to protect the health of our communities and everything we hold dear.

To draw a medical analogy, our governments’ continued expansion of coal and gas in the light of extreme climate risk, is like a health professional telling a patient it’s okay to smoke when they have heart and lung disease. Such an action would be medically indefensible and viewed as unethical in the extreme.

Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA) calls on the government to apply the same ethics to their decision making when approving energy projects and setting the next emissions reduction target.

DEA condemns the government's approval of the North West Shelf Extension, allowing gas processing at the Burrup Hub until 2070. We further condemn the approval of the Ulan coal mine and other fossil fuel projects.

We expect our government to put the health of our communities first by embracing its ethical duty to address our dependence on fossil fuels, by passing legislation that disallows climate pollution and by adopting a robust evidence based emissions reduction target. At DEA we have an interim reduction target for health care of 80% by 2030, which we would recommend.

Let’s heed the warnings contained within the National Climate Risk Assessment and prepare our cities, suburbs and towns for climate change. Let’s do everything we can to protect our natural world, ensuring the health of our ecosystems, recognising that their health impacts our own.

Our government clearly understands the risk, they must now accept their responsibility to not make things worse by moving us on from coal, oil and gas.

MEDIA CONTACT

DEA Media and Communications Lead, Carmela Ferraro
0410 703 074
[email protected]