Bill Gates
Regardless of whether or not the current and very real change in the global climate is due to human activities (we’ll leave that discussion for other outlets better suited to it such as Nature’s Climate Feedback blog), one thing is certain: increasing global temperatures could have serious consequences for health and society, be it an increased spread of the malaria-bearing mosquito into currently temperate climes or increased migration from drought-hit areas.
This raises a question: would tackling climate change be beneficial to health or not? As was widely reported in the media yesterday, in his annual letter for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates expresses concern that any money spent on climate change mitigation could detract from the money spent on health issues. Perhaps he is right, especially if it were to happen in the way he envisages with funding for health policies being diverted to climate change policies.
However, towards the end of last year, the Trust was involved in the funding and presentation of several studies in the Lancet that suggest this needn’t always be the case. As the work from the groups co-ordinated by Professor Sir Andy Haines at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine showed, climate change mitigation policies could actually have a significant and positive impact on health.
Some aspects reported in the studies, such as increased use of public transport, cycling and walking to reduce pollution from motorised traffic, are probably obvious to many as a means of improving people’s health – either directly or indirectly. Others, such as encouraging widespread use of more energy-efficient, low-polluting cook stoves in developing countries such as India might not be. According to the Lancet reports, this simple measure – if introduced over a 10 year period – could save 2 million lives alone.
Unsurprisingly, given his background, Mr Gates focuses on new technologies as a means of solving problems. However, the new types of carbon-neutral power development that he mentions in his letter are not immediate or existing solutions. In stark contrast, a bike or a cook-stove is. Comparatively speaking they are old technology but it doesn’t take much to produce more of them and they are proven solutions. Critically, they are also very cheap (walking, of course, is even better as it has negligible costs – replacement footwear being the only real outlay).
The major issue for any solutions be they existing or future developments, of course, is persuading people to make use of them. That is possibly the biggest of all the challenges we and others trying to influence government policy and public attitudes to health face; making people adapt the lifestyles in which they have become comfortable, to something new.
If you would like to learn more about the potential health benefits of dealing with climate change, you can watch our film of Andy Haines at our website in our Policy section.
Some of the media coverage of the 2010 annual letter from Bill Gates:
Image credit: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation / Jeff Christensen
Posted in Biomedical Sciences, Climate change, Environment, Nutrition and Health, External News, Funding, Health, International, Policy Tagged: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Environment, London School of Hygeine and Tropical Medicine, Malaria, Media, Nature, Nutrition, Prof Sir Andy Haines, The Lancet
