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A November 2014 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated with high confidence that “Health impacts [of climate change] include greater likelihood of injury and death due to more intense heat waves and fires, increased risks from foodborne and waterborne diseases, and loss of work capacity and reduced labour productivity in vulnerable populations… Globally, the magnitude and severity of negative impacts will increasingly outweigh positive impacts.”
Increasing atmospheric and ocean temperatures bring with them increased frequency and severity of storms, epidemics, heat waves, and other natural disasters that can affect the health care system:
- Storms, floods, wildfires, and extreme temperature events can create emergencies by damaging infrastructure and compromising access to critical resources. Damaged hospital infrastructure or interrupted supply chain access can endanger patients, visitors, and staff, and disable care services when they are needed most.
- Warmer temperatures bring increased risk of food-, water-, and vectorborne infectious diseases.
- Increased emissions combined with extreme humidity can result in poor air quality, exacerbating respiratory conditions in vulnerable populations.
Climate Change in Canada
Canada's rate of warming is about twice the global rate: a 2°C increase globally means a 3 to 4ºC increase for Canada. Effects will persist for centuries because greenhouse gases (GHGs) are long-lived and the oceans are warming. Cumulative CO2 emissions largely determine ultimate warming. A 2°C warming target may still be attainable, but we are already 65% of the way to the associated carbon limit or budget and global emissions must peak before mid-century. GHG emissions need to become net zero in order to stabilize climate at any temperature (NRCan).
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Canada are driven by a number of factors, such as economic and population growth as well as the mix of energy supply. Emissions in Canada’s commercial and residential buildings increased by 14 Mt between 1990 and 2005, and then remained relatively stable around the 2005 levels through to 2011. Since 1990 buildings have accounted for about 12% of Canada’s GHG emissions in any given year. The stability in emissions since 2005 is attributed mainly to energy retrofits, as 40% of all building floor space has seen some level of energy retrofit between 2005-2009.
The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care has won international recognition on climate leadership for the development of the Health Care Climate Change Resiliency Toolkit. For more information on this toolkit and how to engage your facility in using the toolkit, please contact Linda Varangu atLinda@greenhealthcare.ca. See all 2016 Global Climate Champions here.
Watch the replay of the Feb. 16 Climate & Health Meeting
hosted by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, APHA, The Climate Reality Project, Harvard Global Health Institute and the University of Washington Center for Health and the Global Environment with support from the Turner Foundation and other organizations. Read more.
Eating too much red meat can have health consequences and has negative impacts on the environment, causing air and water pollution that contribute to climate change. The James Beard Foundation has developed an innovative strategy to reduce consumption of meat while still enjoying the foods we love: mixing in veggies. Enter the Blended Burger. A blended burger combines mushrooms (or other plant-based ingredients) with ground beef (or other ground meat) to reduce the total meat in the burger while improving its flavor. Health Care Without Harm is bringing this strategy to the health sector as a complement to its “Less Meat, Better Meat” approach. Read More.
The Pan Canadian Framework on Climate Change and Clean Growth is now available online! Federal, provincial, and territorial governments have identified new actions to build resilience to climate change across Canada in the following areas:
- Translating scientific information and Traditional Knowledge into action
- Building climate resilience through infrastructure
- Protecting and improving human health and well-being
- Supporting particularly vulnerable regions
- Reducing climate-related hazards and disaster risks
The majority of Southeastern Australia hospitals were not designed with weather risks in mind, and many facilities in the region are currently feeling the impact of extreme heat. While healthcare providers are coping with the impact of the weather events, the buildings they work in and the infrastructure that supports them often constrain their ability to respond. Power outages and sick people waiting hours for beds have been reported. Read the article.
Climate change is advancing at an alarming rate around the world and it is now more important than ever that we act congruently to reduce GHG emissions while planning for resilience to the impacts that are already evident and projected to worsen. However, these crucial pathways are still largely being considered separately. The Low Carbon Resilience report from the Adaptation to Climate Change Team (ACT) points to the co-benefits and synergies we can achieve if we consider adaptation and mitigation simultaneously.
The University of Waterloo’s Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation found governments at all levels across the country need to take immediate action to make the country’s infrastructure more resilient or face increasingly catastrophic financial loses in the future. Read more.
Emissions from agriculture threaten to keep increasing as global meat and dairy consumption rises. If agricultural emissions are not addressed, nitrous oxide from fields and methane from livestock may double by 2070. Read more.
2016 is set to break even the temperature records of 2015. Preliminary data shows that 2016’s global temperatures are approximately 1.2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to an assessment by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Read more.
With the U.S. Supreme Court stay of President Obama’s clean power plan, there are concerns the U.S. will miss its stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) by 26-28 percent by 2025. The U.S. made this commitment in advance of the UN Climate Summit in Paris last year. Read more.
Access to fresh fruit, vegetables and many other foods could be dramatically limited due to climate change by 2050, according to a new report published in the medical journal the Lancet. In the report, scientists from the U.S. and the U.K. predict a lack of access to nutritious foods, which could see severe decline in public health — and, in some cases, deaths. Read more.
Climate change is a critical public health issue — one that hospitals need to do more to address. Every year, U.S. hospitals are emitting 8 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gases, generating more than 5.9 million tons of waste annually, and spending more than $6.5 billion on energy costs. While many hospitals are beginning to adopt more climate-friendly policies, including changing supply chains to obtain greener products, increasing water conservation efforts, or reducing toxic and hazardous waste, we still must do more to reduce our collective environmental footprint. Read more.
Environmental exposure is top of mind for Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy. During a lecture last week at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s College of Medicine Research, McCarthy, who has worked in environmental safety for more than 20 years, spoke to a small group of medical students about the EPA’s mission to protect public health. Read more.
The Notice of intent to inform stakeholders of upcoming consultations on proposed changes to the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, published on December 10, 2016, in Part I of the Canada Gazette, provides information about the proposed changes and plans for consultations. The proposed expansion to the reporting requirements includes:
- Lowering the reporting threshold from 50,000 to 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent. All facilities that emit the equivalent of 10,000 tonnes or more of greenhouse gases in CO2 equivalent per year will be required to submit a report;
- Reporting of additional data (e.g. more detailed emissions, quantities of fuels or feedstocks consumed, etc) and applying specific quantification methods to determine emissions. These new requirements will be gradually phased in by sectors.
ECCC will begin consultations with stakeholders in early 2017, in advance of issuing requirements for 2017. Interested stakeholders will find information on how to get involved in the above notice or on the GHGRP website. If you are interested in participating in a collective stakeholder discussion with the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care, please email Linda at linda@greenhealthcare.ca.
The implementation notes show that the majority of the GHG emissions are within the supply chain providing products and services, and pharmaceuticals have been identified as a major GHG contributor to the health system – 16% of the entire NHS health care system carbon footprint. Also provided is a list of 20 priority pharmaceutical items with the highest GHG impact, which collectively account for more than 60% of the pharmaceutical footprint. Having doctors understand the implications of medications from a global health perspective could be a small step in the education process and can start the discussion of what the options for reducing pharmaceutical use could look like. Read more.
Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change is an international, multi-disciplinary research collaboration, dedicated to tracking progress on health and climate change from 2016 to 2030. Click here to access the latest report which describes the Lancet Countdown's plans and proposes a series of indicators and indicator domains, to be tracked by the collaboration.
COP22 featured a range of events covering the impacts of climate change on public health, including: Health Action Day, Health Care Without Harm and Global Green and Healthy Hospital’s Climate and Health Care Conference, and the launch of the Lancet Countdown, a project aiming to annually track and report on the health impacts of climate hazards. Read more from Health Care Without Harm News.
First Ministers agreed to develop a pan-Canadian Framework to achieve Canada’s international commitments in the Paris Agreement. They agreed to implement policies in support of meeting or exceeding Canada’s 2030 target of a 30% reduction below 2005 emissions and transitioning Canada to a stronger, climate-resilient, low-carbon economy. Read More.
Released November 3, 2016, Volume 19 of Healthcare Quarterly has a special focus on climate change. Check out these exciting GREEN articles:
Practice Greenhealth's Fall 2016 issue is now available online. The focus of the issue is Climate and Water. Highlights include one major city's strategy to enhance its climate change resiliency, environmental stewardship in anaesthesia, environmentally preferable purchasing, and celebrating Healthcare Without Harm's 20th anniversary. Access the full magazine here.
The special issue of the Pan American Journal of Public Health (PJPH) " Climate Resilient Health Care Facilities" is now online!
The Working Group on Adaptation and Climate Resilience is one of four working groups established at the direction of Canadian First Ministers in the Vancouver Declaration. It is led by a federal and a provincial co-chair, and is composed of members from federal, provincial, and territorial governments. Click here to read the Green Health Care submission for the consideration of Federal/Provincial/Territorial Working Group on Adaptation and Climate Resilience.
A busy medical ward is the last place you want the lights to go out in the event of a hurricane, flood or extreme weather event. These are also the conditions that can drive surges of patients to emergency rooms for treatment at a rate that can quickly outpace the hospitals capacity to react. Climate change increases the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events and conditions – from asthma to vector diseases — likely to increase demand for healthcare. Read more.
The BC Climate Change Health Policy Group (CCHPG) provides a vehicle for organizing the health sector to document and reduce the impacts of climate change on health in the province while supporting efforts to reduce the sector's carbon footprint. The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care is pleased to participate in this important greening initiative. Interested in learning more about CCHPG activities, meetings or membership? Read more.
2015 was a big year for climate action. In August, President Obama and the EPA announced the Clean Power Plan, limiting carbon pollution from U.S. power plants for the first time in our history and demonstrating a serious commitment to addressing climate change and its impact on human health. Read more.