Climate Change Emergency Medical Response Blog

Updates on the science and health impacts will appear on this page as well as our blog posts.

Climate Change Emergency Declaration

We call on our healthcare, other professional associations, religious and our governments to make a climate change emergency declaration on behalf of present and future vulnerable populations.

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Climate Change Emergency Medical Response

The world is in an unprecedented climate change emergency. What role can doctors and other concerned professionals play to save humanity and most life on Earth?

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Food Security and Climate Change

The biggest health risk of global climate change will be its impact on food security, yet climate models don't include all the adverse effects of climate change on agriculture.

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Climate Change Solutions

This page lists global warming and climate change solutions for health professionals to promote.

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The UNFCCC (Climate Change Convention) and Health

These excerpts from the UNFCCC (the United Nations climate change convention) highlight the intersections between climate change, health and policy.

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State of the Climate

State of the Climate is a research summary on methane emissions and other carbon feedbacks, especially in the Arctic, which threaten life on Earth.

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The Medical Response to Climate Change is Growing

The medical response to climate change is growing. Medical associations, medical journals and medical researchers are starting to focus on the impacts of climate change on human and population health.

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No New Treaty

Stalled UN climate negotiations mean no new treaty is on the way, heightening the climate emergency.

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Climate Change Emergency Letter

This climate change emergency letter to presidents of medical associations everywhere urges them to take immediate action to influence climate change policy.

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Undeclared Global Climate Change Emergency

Why the global climate emergency is not recognized

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Evidence

Just as doctors seek evidence when making a diagnosis, this page links to evidence of the climate change emergency for health professionals who want to learn about their role in mitigation.

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Why the 2 Degree Target is Too High

Although the 2 degree target for global warming is now almost a universally accepted policy position for global climate change mitigation, it is disastrously high!

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Climate Change Emergency Declaration Endorsement

Join Climate Change Emergency Medical Response and offer a Climate Change Emergency Declaration endorsement.

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Mission of Climate Change Emergency Medical Response

The mission of Climate Change Emergency Medical Response is to provide a one-stop resource on the planetary climate change emergency and remedial action.

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Is There Hope in Cancun?

Although the best of the negotiating options on the table for the Cancun climate conference are better than the best at Copenhagen in 2009, the excerpts below show there is no chance of any new treaty. The UNFCCC Executive is saying that a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol is out of the question any time soon and is not even on the horizon. This signifies a huge backward step in expectations compared with pre-Copenhagen.

That makes the emergency situation even more compelling, making the need for a statement from the medical profession and other leading concerned professions even more urgent. We are in a race for survival against multiple climate feedbacks happening decades ahead of the computer model projections, and we have yet to start running.

• The 2009 UN Copenhagen Climate Conference communiqué said nothing about health, and climate change is all about health, by Stephen Llewellyn, 27 September 2010:
• "Dr. Dana Hanson's one-year term as president of the World Medical Association is almost over, and he says his biggest frustration in the job was raising awareness about the health impacts of climate change.
• "'It is going to affect you and I and everyone,' the Fredericton-based dermatologist said in a recent interview. 'If we don't have our health, we can kiss our economic health goodbye.'
• "The international climate change conference in Copenhagen last year granted observer status to 120 groups, said Hanson. Most were industry groups and only a handful were health organizations, he said.
• "'The resulting communiqué said nothing about health, and climate change is all about health,' he said.

Incredibly, the now inevitable life-or-death impacts to huge vulnerable populations and the enormous risks to all future generations are not on the agenda.

• Bringing Health into the Climate Change Regime, by J. J. Kirton and J. M. Guebert, University of Toronto, November 2009:
• "The UNFCCC recognized the direct health-climate connection at its start and robustly from 1999 to 2003. But the connection has disappeared from the Conference of the Parties and from the Meeting Of the Conference of the Parties since 2005."

And here's where some real pessimism about Cancun stems from:

• "Christiana Figueres said that 'governments will meet this challenge, for the simple reason that humanity must meet this challenge.'
• 'We just don't have another option,' said Figueres, who replace[d] Yvo de Boer ... as head of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
• "Even if a treaty is agreed on, 'I don't believe that we will ever have a final agreement on climate, certainly not in my lifetime,' she said.

• "So far, pledges to cut greenhouse gases only add up to about 13-14 percent by 2020."

IPCC Reasons for Concern

The IPCC reasons for concern are designed to help policymakers define dangerous climate change. But they leave out the gravest dangers.

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Ignored Climate Science

Often ignored climate science includes essential aspects of global climate science to explain why today's global warming is twice what we think it is.

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Why Climate Change is an Emergency

Here is abundant evidence showing why climate change is an emergency and an increasing threat to the very survival of humanity.

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Climate Change Dangers of Concern for Health and Human Rights Professionals

Climate change dangers of concern for health care professionals include lack of policy on the risk of public health catastrophe.

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Defining Dangerous Climate Change

Defining dangerous climate change impacts and risks in terms of threats to human population health and survival is something the health care profession is qualified to do.

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