The Missing Broad Street Pump Handle of Climate Change
Climate change is the cholera of our era
Professor Sir Muir Gray - Public Health Director of the Campaign for Greener Healthcare
Smoking, Aids, swine flu? They all pale into insignificance compared to climate change’s threat to health. That proposition will instantly provoke a hostile reaction from the diminishing band of climate-change sceptics. But as a doctor of 40 years’ standing who has been involved in running public health services for 30 years, I know that the evidence is good enough to make action, not inaction, the sensible choice. An empirical view of the data shows that delay will not just increase the amount of preventable harm, it may take us past a point of no return.
The defeat of Cholera in London by John Snow is an heroic story of the use of evidence.
Unfortunately Muir Grey doesn't actually provide or point us to any of his evidence or data why climate change is the cholera of our times; (apart from a lot of Frenchies dying of heat stroke).
Campaign for Greener Healthcare is part of Knowledge Into Action a registered Charity No. 1123566, which is "harnessing the revolutionary power of citizens and the Internet to improve the three determinants of health – the physical environment, the social environment and healthcare". It is newly formed and so hasn't filed any accounts and its prospectus makes no mention of how it intends to raise the money it intends to spend. I wonder.
Comments
Another hectoring bloody medico who thinks that because he's got a stethoscope he sits at the right hand of God. I wish these buggers would wind their necks in.
Posted by: David Gillies | May 25, 2009 3:22 PM
"...diminishing band of climate-change sceptics."
Wrong again.
Posted by: NoAstronomer | May 26, 2009 2:39 PM
Aha! Hectoring medico was right on the money. Turns out this Gray cove has form. He was a leading light in that other pseudo-charity, ASH. So he can definitely get bent.
Posted by: David Gillies | May 26, 2009 6:46 PM