#Over 200 medical journals cosign ‘catastrophic’ warning

More than 200 leading health journals have issued a joint statement — a “call for emergency action” by world leaders to protect public health in the face of rising global temperatures and diminishing biodiversity.

Prominent peer-reviewed journals including the BMJ, the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine have co-signed the statement, making this the first time so many research publications have issued such a warning on the severity of climate change.

“As health professionals, we must do all we can to aid the transition to a sustainable, fairer, resilient, and healthier world,” they write, in an editorial published Monday. “We, as editors of health journals, call for governments and other leaders to act, marking 2021 as the year that the world finally changes course.”

The authors reiterate that the disastrous conditions we’re seeing in the world today — extreme temperatures, natural disasters, rapidly declining wildlife and air pollution, to name a few — are disproportionately affecting the world’s most vulnerable populations, such as children and the elderly, minority communities and the economically disadvantaged.

And it’s only a matter of short time before climate change threatens us all.

“Indeed, no temperature rise is ‘safe,’‌ ” they caution, adding that heat-related deaths among people aged 65 and up has increased by more than 50% during the past 20 years. “Higher temperatures have brought increased dehydration and renal function loss, dermatological malignancies, tropical infections, adverse mental health outcomes, pregnancy complications, allergies, and cardiovascular and pulmonary morbidity and mortality.”

Meanwhile, rapid warming has contributed to a 1.8-5.6% loss in crop yield since 1981, adding to the growing hunger epidemic — which has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, authors noted.

Already, air pollution produced by cars and power plants was linked to 30,000 American deaths in 2015 — the same year the Paris Climate Accord was introduced — and may contribute to declining mental health, according to a recent study.

Said Alan Smyth, joint editor-in-chief of the journal Thorax, in a statement, “Global warming affects the future of our planet and right now it is affecting the lung health of all of its inhabitants across all ages, from young to old. This editorial is a call to world leaders at COP26 to take immediate and proportionate action to limit the rise in global temperatures.”

The editorial comes ahead November’s COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow, where critics hope to see more ambitious plans to tackle the harmful effects of climate change, spurred by the Paris agreement — which garnered support from 195 countries.

Just last week the United Nations released an alarming report, finding that climate related natural disasters, including hurricanes, floods and wildfires, have increased five-fold in just 50 years.

The paper urges lawmakers to make a “huge investment” to “accelerate cleaner technologies and transform societies,” action which they say will produce inherent health and economic benefits — from better jobs through new, green technology, to healthier diets as part of sustainable agriculture.

The world’s wealthiest countries bear the greatest burden in this endeavor.

“What we must do to tackle pandemics, health inequities and climate change is the same — global solidarity and action that recognize that, within and across nations our destinies are inextricably linked,” BMJ Global Health editor-in-chief Seye Abimbola said, “just as human health is inextricably linked to the health of the planet.”