As a result, governments and health officials need to begin to think about how to respond to an anticipated increase in the number and scope of climate-related health crises, ranging from killer heat waves and famine, to floods and waves of infectious diseases.
That, in a nutshell, was the message delivered to scientists at the annual meeting of the
As a result, governments and health officials need to begin to think about how to respond to an anticipated increase in the number and scope of climate-related health crises, ranging from killer heat waves and famine, to floods and waves of infectious diseases.
by Jonathan A. Patz, an authority on the human health effects of global environmental change.
As the world's climate warms, and as people make widespread alterations to the global landscape, human populations will become far more vulnerable to heat-related mortality, air pollution-related illnesses, infectious diseases and malnutrition, Patz says.
"We are destined to have some warming," says Patz, a professor of environmental studies and population health studies at the <<>>.
But it won't be a gradually warming world that triggers future health crises, says Patz, a scientist based at the UW-Madison Center for Sustainability and the Global
Environment. It will be a dramatic increase in severe weather events - major storms, heat waves, flooding - triggered by a shifting global climate that will wreak most of the human health havoc.
"Averages don't kill people - it is the extremes," Patz explains.
The issue, Patz says, is how are we going to adapt? If we don't do something to mitigate the potential human health effects of climate change, the world, beginning at the local and regional level, will begin to experience climate-related catastrophe.
"In the face of climate change, what are the adaptive measures at many and variable scales that we can take to reduce the health impact of climate change? That's what we need to be thinking about," he says.
The Wisconsin scientist suggests we may already be seeing the health consequences of a warmer world: The heat wave that struck Europe in the summer of 2004 claimed an estimated 22,000-35,000 lives, mostly the infirm, elderly and poor.
"That event was so far out of the normal climate range that one analysis pegs it as a signal of climate change," Patz explains. "So what are we going to be adapting to? It won't be creeping temperatures. What we may see is an increased frequency of these extreme events."
Moreover, as temperature regimes change, weather patterns will be altered and increased rainfall will facilitate the spread of waterborne and food-borne disease. And increased local rainfall also will make life easier for the insects and animals that carry some human diseases.
One strategy to mitigate future climate-related health problems, according to Patz, would be to develop and use climate forecasts and warning systems to avert disease and adverse health outcomes.