AT the World Health Organisation’s Health and Climate Conference recently, the Director-General concluded: “The evidence is overwhelming: climate change endangers human health. Solutions exist and we need to act decisively to change this trajectory.”
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Climate change poses a big threat to human health by affecting clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food and secure shelter.
We rely on healthy ecosystems to ensure we have clean water and air, healthy soils and food and resistance to disease.
Now is the time for the Eurobodalla to act with even more determination to contribute to reducing human-induced climate change.
Many of us are already working for a more resilient, active and sustainable community that is less energy-dependent.
Our councillors can help by working to bring genuine renewable energy generation to the Eurobodalla, to keep all new and current courses available and affordable at Moruya TAFE so that residents can be educated for the jobs that will result, and to protect our biodiversity.
At the national level, we should support the 12 Australian medical and health scientists who, in an open letter to Prime Minister Abbott published in the Medical Journal of Australia last month, urged that the economic implications of climate change for human health be discussed at the G20 meeting in Brisbane in November.
Action will, inevitably, be costly, but unless we start to address it, the impacts on the health of Australians and the national health budgets in the future will be daunting.
Sheila Monahan
Tuross Head
