Hitherto, climate change had
been characterized primarily as a matter of science and political economy
wherein the latter was lagging behind the former. As the ongoing accumulating
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the oceans were finally having a
significant impact on the planet and us in the mid-2020s, breaking the grip of
the oil industry and the related consumer demand for fossil-fuel energy proved
to be too much for the UN’s annual “COP” summits because any agreements at them
were nonbinding on governments. So at the commencement of the COP31 summit on
November 9, 2026, the UN’s Climate Change Executive Secretary adroitly shifted
the characterization of climate change to one of health, and more specifically
healthcare systems—something presumably more manageable. Unfortunately, the
focus on health put symptoms and effects ahead of addressing the causes of
global warming.
Simon Stiell, the Secretary, labeled
the “climate crisis” as “a global health crisis,” and added that it is a crisis
“of pandemic proportions.”[1]
But to say that health was by 2026 impacted by the effects of global warming,
such as more people suffering heat-stroke during the relentless heatwaves in the
E.U. during the summer of 2026, is not to say that climate change is even
primarily a health crisis. Rather, the crisis is one of pollution, which in
turn is fueled by profits and the related political connections that protect
the polluting companies and the oil industry. Furthermore, the percentage of
deaths that summer that can be traced back to global warming does not come
close to being characterized as a pandemic. The rhetorical hyperbole is itself
a stretch, for “(b)urning fossil fuels and human-caused climate change” were only
“linked to an estimated 3.3 million deaths annually through outdoor air
pollution and extreme heat, according to the Lancet Countdown 2026.”[2]
That the global population was over 8 billion is enough to put 3.3 million into
a realistic perspective—hardly constituting a pandemic. Moreover, Stiell’s
attempt to redefine the problem of climate change as a health crisis mistakes symptoms
for the underlying problem, which more accurately could be characterized as the
failure of the world to hold governments accountable for missing “green energy”
targets. Just because the “COP” summits have failed does not mean that climate change
is or can be sufficiently addressed as a health crisis.
Whether or not climate change was
“battering health systems and infrastructure” as Stiell contended, his
assurance at COP31 that health would again be a central issue did not address
the pressing need to attend to the causes of climate change. To be sure,
he did point out the hard choice of whether to “accept ongoing fossil fuel cost
pain for families, firms, and governments,” but to say that “that includes
health systems” sidesteps the politically difficult choice itself.[3]
Admittedly, rising “temperatures, drought and heavy rainfall can contribute to
heat-related illness and mortality, wildfire smoke and poor air quality, malnutrition
and food insecurity, injuries, and changing risks of water- and vector-borne
diseases such as cholera, malaria and dengue,” but the key word here is contribute.[4]
What about the increased flooding and fires themselves? Health is impacted
from these, but so too are other things.
It is easy enough to get carried away with health effects, and even reduce the problem of climate change to health itself, especially given that getting governments to push through laws that restrict fossil-fuel-sourced energy had proved too difficult. It is much easier to urge governments to invest more in their healthcare systems. Just because the COP summits, and thus the world, had failed over a decade to get governments to clamp down on fossil-fuels so the target of 1.5C would not be breached does not mean that fortifying healthcare systems would be enough to reverse the concentration of carbon dioxide in the oceans and atmosphere. Asking whether people “have safe water after a flood” is important at a local level, but a global focus on a symptom-oriented, tertiary question effectively signals our species’ surrender on addressing the problem of climate change itself.[5] Crying wolf that a pandemic was already in progress only discredits the attempt itself to shift off the causes of climate change onto something more easily addressed by governments.
In “recalibrating” to focus on health policy, expediency and
avoidance of hard political decisions can thus be inferred. Put another way, continuing
the insufficient responses to reducing carbon pollution, with the globe already
expected to warm beyond the 1.5C target set by the UN within even just a few
years of 2026, could be expected to bring health systems to their breaking-point
anyway. Perhaps the focus of COP31 should have been on the need for enforcement
power beyond the nation-state level on noncompliant governments, or on
practical politics, such as setting up a global fund to support candidates for national
office who campaign on curtailing fossil-fuel use sooner rather than more
conveniently later. Even just expanding from a focus on healthcare systems to include
ways in which governments can fortify shores from rising sea-levels and even
move entire towns would be better than turning COP31 into a summit on
healthcare.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
