Jonathan Patz is a public health expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has looked closely at the health impacts of climate change all over the world.
 | "A tiny bit of warming can make the difference between an epidemic and no epidemic." Jonathan Patz |
Dr. Patz, we have heard about some of the serious health risks that global warming presents to the developing world. But why should the "developed" world worry about the health impacts of climate change?
We certainly learned from the European heat wave that heat waves are killers, and that we are still vulnerable to those types of direct effects. The fact that the developing world may be more at risk does not isolate us. We still live in an international world with a lot of trade and transport, so an increase in disease anywhere in the world can affect any country.
There are also unique dangers in the developed world, such as expanding urban areas, urban sprawl, and the issue of intensifying urban heat island effect, worsening heat waves, and so on.
So, the developed world may also feel the health effects of climate change?
People argue, well, the United States has a lot of air conditioning.' But this turns into one of those ethical dilemmas where if you are wealthy enough to have air conditioning then you are okay, while other people are that much worse off.
Meanwhile Africa has so much malaria and malnutrition, which are very climate-sensitive and are intensified with global warming. But is Africa one of the main perpetrators of greenhouse gas emissions? I would say with the United States at 4 percent of the world's population and producing 25 percent of its emissions, there is sort of an equity issue there.
Were the European heat wave of 2003 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 "wake-up calls" for the West about the potential health dangers of climate change?
Well, even though it is difficult to pin one or two major extreme weather events on long-term climate change, I think that bit-by-bit, the public and policymakers are beginning to recognize that global warming is real. There are threats. Each time you have a major event, you get a spike in awareness.
So, people are not arguing so much about global warming as they are about the numbers. They are now more likely to say, ‘Okay, it's warming. What does that actually mean?' They recognize the impacts are quite broad and reach across many sectors, including public health.
Where is current research about the connections between climate change and public health focused? What are the unknowns that researchers are looking at?
I think one key question is whether or not there are thresholds that we need to be careful of. How hot is too hot for human physiology? And then you need to think of insect-borne diseases. For cold-blooded mosquitoes carrying a parasite, a tiny bit of warming can make the difference between an epidemic and no epidemic. So, I think identifying some of the thresholds and trying not to go beyond them is one of the key fields of research.
Another one is asking questions about how diseases move geographically. For example, in the African highlands, malaria has increased, partly because of human migration and drug resistance, but there are recent studies coming out documenting parallel warming trends in the African highlands. If you increase malaria transmission and it is climate based, could that, in fact contribute to drug resistance? So, it gets very complicated quickly.
Are there other questions being asked by researchers in your field?
Another one is the issue of air pollution: ground-level ozone, photo-chemical smog - not to be confused with the good stuff up in the stratosphere that protects us, but the ground-level pollution that exacerbates asthma and other respiratory diseases. The new findings are showing - not surprisingly - that ozone could increase with warming.
Another big question is about stagnant air masses. I think climatologists are beginning to ask the question that if heat and ozone are deadly, can we really do a better job of predicting the frequency of stagnant air masses that contribute to those problems.
What would you say are the best-case and worst-case scenarios if we look ahead to the health impacts of global warming over the next few decades?
I think the worst-case scenario would be if we continue to ignore this broad-scale environmental health risk. We need to prioritize and look at the acute crises of today, such as tuberculosis and AIDS, but if we just continue to do business as usual and ignore the long-term environmental risks, they will turn around and bite us in the future.
Climate change is one of these diffuse problems that is really hard to pinpoint and say ‘Aha, there's the problem. Let's just turn the valve off right here, and we're fixed.' I think this is where we really have to examine - especially in the United States - our consumptive energy policies and lifestyles, and begin to take some responsibility for what this means for delayed or transferred impacts on the rest of the world, but also on ourselves.
And the best-case scenario...?
Well, the best case is to realize that it is a real problem and there are real solutions. And these solutions are not that hard. Just keeping on the way we are going is hurting us in the long run because there is so much innovation out there now. Simply by being smarter and conserving, I have heard that we could cut our energy consumption by 30 or 40 percent in the United States - and that is by not even blinking or changing our lifestyle. We need to go beyond that. Kyoto Protocol is just a first step, but absolutely not enough.
I think there is an opportunity. Businesses can make a lot of money being green and promoting environmental stewardship. This is not one of these dilemmas of protect the environment or grow the economy dilemmas. I think that is a false dichotomy.
Jonathan Patz is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the lead author of the United Nations/World Bank Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.
editor: Valdis Wish
publishing date: August 16, 2006
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one of the topics that can be discussed is that which are the sections in the society that are more or directly effected because of global warming and how.like for a bebate...what are the...