Climate Change: Health

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 21st December 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Walmsley]

That this House takes note of the global effects of climate change on health.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords,

“Climate change isn’t just hurting the planet—it’s a public health emergency”.


That is the conclusion of Christiana Figueres, chair of the Lancet Countdown, a collaborative research project which published a report in October that has shone a light on the damaging impacts that climate change is having on our health.

In 2009, the UCL-Lancet Commission published its first report on the relationship between climate change and health. It concluded, simply, that climate change represents the biggest threat to global health in the 21st century. Since that publication, the Lancet has continued to work on this topic, and instead of describing climate change as a threat, the most recent report concluded, optimistically, that climate change represents the biggest opportunity for global health in the 21st century. This change of tone reflects a growing recognition that action on climate change can bring about dividends for public health, a notion which empowers the health and climate community to capture these co-benefits. More recently, the Lancet has pioneered the concept of planetary health. The foundation of this concept is the growing body of evidence that the health of humanity is intrinsically linked to the health of the environment. But by its actions, humanity now threatens to destabilise the earth’s key life-support systems, with significant implications for the political systems and economies that run the nations of the world.

This year’s Lancet Countdown is the latest report in this field from a cross-sectoral partnership of universities and organisations from across the world. It is an accountability mechanism, using 40 indicators to track progress annually on climate action and health, and to catalyse political and scientific discussion about its importance. Today’s debate is proof that it has already succeeded in the second of those aims. The Lancet has committed to producing this annual state of the union report in order to try to sustain, in the interests of global health and stability, the momentum on climate change that was achieved with the negotiation of the Paris Agreement.

The key conclusion from the report is that climate change is damaging health worldwide. The multiple threats to human health of climate change are unequivocal, interacting and potentially irreversible: from direct impacts such as heat waves and extreme weather events such as storms, forest fires, floods or drought, to indirect effects on ecosystems, such as agricultural losses and changing patterns of disease, and effects on economies and social structures, such as migration and conflict. These effects disproportionately impact the most vulnerable populations, but every community will be affected. The World Health Organization agrees that climate change negatively affects the basics of life: safe drinking water and access to food and shelter. Here in the UK, the latest climate change risk assessment under the Climate Change Act 2008 includes heat waves, flooding and drought as aspects that risk UK public health.

According to Countdown, the critical issue at hand globally has been the delay in our response to climate change, which over the past two decades has jeopardised human life and livelihoods. However, the good news is that the past five years have seen an accelerated response, and in 2017, momentum is building across a number of sectors. The direction of travel is set, with clear and unprecedented opportunities for public health. That is why the tone of the latest report is more optimistic than before.

I am glad to note that here in the UK the Climate Change Act 2008 is legally binding whether we are in or out of the EU, and we will also continue to be a signatory to the Paris Agreement although we will have to submit our own submission separately from the rest of the EU. But even if all the signatories to the Paris Agreement achieve their commitments, it is estimated that there will still be an increase in mean global surface temperature of 2.7 degrees by 2100, resulting in significant environmental change, so the Paris targets are not enough. However, if the targets are not achieved, and the attitude of the current US Administration makes it likely that they will not, over 4 degrees is possible, with profound damage to the planet and human health.

So let us look in more detail at the impact of climate change on health. Annual weather-related disasters increased by 46% between 2000 and 2013, and scientists attribute this increase to climate change. These disasters have a monumental effect on the health of the affected communities. Droughts and flooding result in starvation and the mass movement of people, all of which are disastrous for health. Here in the UK, 1.8 million people are living in areas susceptible to flooding or coastal erosion. Although relatively few people die from drowning during UK floods, the psychological trauma and effects on mental health of having your home or business flooded are considerable. A UK study found that flood victims were more than six times more at risk of depression and anxiety and seven times more at risk of PTSD than the general population. So what are the Government doing to reduce the risk of flooding and protect vulnerable areas, and how are the planning regulations being used to discourage new building in areas susceptible to flooding?

Massive storms destroy people’s homes, and most of this damage worldwide is not insured. Again, these storms result in the displacement of people and major health issues, such as cholera, where populations are living close together in poor-quality temporary shelter. Accelerated efforts towards poverty reduction and sustainable development have helped to minimise harm to date. However, the Countdown report’s authors believe that limits to adaptive capacity will soon be reached, so we must address the root cause of these disasters, which is climate change itself, and I shall come to that in a minute. In the meantime, what are the UK Government doing to help populations that are displaced by such disastrous weather events?

Secondly, global warming has a direct effect on the livelihoods of vulnerable people exposed to heat-wave events. From 2000 to 2016, the global average temperature where people are actually living has risen by approximately 0.9 degrees Celsius, more than twice the global mean land temperature increase. Since 2000 the number of those vulnerable people exposed to heat-wave events has increased by around 125 million. This means more people dying from overheating and more people working on the land whose productivity is impacted. The report calculates that global physical labour capacity in populations exposed to severe temperature rises decreased by around 5.3% from 2000 to 2016. This reduces their income and has an effect on local and global food security. Of course, extreme cold weather also usually results in increased deaths, especially of older people through hypothermia, while the increase in the number of UK deaths due to overheating is projected to rise by a massive 250% by the 2050s, partly due to our ageing population, unless action is taken. Both these effects put major stress on the resources of our NHS.

Then there is the effect of global warming on communicable diseases. The geographical scope of some of the vectors of communicable diseases has increased considerably, and this is very worrying for us in the UK. We are already seeing Culex modestus, a vector for the West Nile virus, being found in south-east England. Higher temperatures in future will also increase the suitability of the UK’s climate for other invasive mosquito species. Plant diseases are already reaching us, with major effects on the countryside. For example, in the last few years many of our large and important trees have suffered from diseases that we did not see decades ago, and this has been linked to climate change as well as the increase in the cross-border sales of trees.

So are we doing enough to adapt to the effects of climate change? The report concludes that we are not. However, there are great opportunities. Mitigating climate change benefits health in many ways, but there are some areas where the two are particularly closely linked—for example, air pollution, which is a global health crisis. Seventy-one per cent of the almost 3,000 cities in the World Health Organization’s database do not satisfy WHO annual fine particulate matter exposure recommendations. That includes London and 43 other British cities. This poor air quality results in 40,000 premature deaths each year in the UK—and not just of those who suffer from lung problems.

The UK Government have identified poor air quality as the largest environmental risk to public health, being linked to cancer, asthma, stroke and heart disease, diabetes, obesity and changes linked to dementia. In the case of fine particulates, we also know that they particularly affect young children, including the brain development of infants.

It is the heating, transport, industry and energy sectors which are the source of man-made air pollution, producing most of the particulates, as well as carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming, so we need clean transport and clean energy production, but we have an economic system in which the full costs of climate change are not paid for by those responsible for the problem. Will the Government look at the real cost of the use of fossil fuels and consider carbon pricing as a means of getting the balance right? Will they take positive action to reduce the number of diesel vehicles on our roads? What action are they taking to encourage and enable people to insulate their homes properly?

Progress on coal phase-out has tangible benefits for air quality globally, and it is good to see that in 2016-17, the amount of additional coal capacity planned for construction halved. In addition, traffic emissions make a major contribution to the quality of the air we breathe, especially in cities. Sustainable travel uptake, such as walking and cycling, can mitigate climate change while at the same time encouraging healthier lifestyles and improving air quality.

In these ways, mitigation tackles climate change and reduces the harm to health from air pollution. When will the Government spend on sustainable travel reach £10 per head annually, as they have committed to do, and why are they planning to reduce the “active travel” investment from £287 million per year now to £147 million per year by 2020? As physical inactivity and obesity cost the NHS more than £1 billion a year, this seems a very unwise reduction.

I also draw the Minister’s attention to the need for a comprehensive carbon capture and storage strategy, as recommended in the report of the advisory group on CCS, ably led by the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh. Clean energy production is essential, but as we grow our ability to produce electricity by sustainable means, we expect to have to depend on fossil fuels for many years. In the light of that, it was very disappointing that the Government cancelled the carbon capture and storage competition. The noble Lord’s report is unequivocal that CCS is an essential component in delivering the lowest-cost decarbonisation across the whole economy, and there is no justification for delay in getting a national strategy up and running. His six recommendations provide a blueprint for how this needs to be done, yet the Government have not responded to the report. I hope that the noble Baroness can tell us why that is and when a government response will be provided.

Food and agriculture is also a sizeable contributor to climate change. The average dietary CO₂ emissions per person in the UK are 5.6 kilograms per day, but if we ate according to the WHO’s nutritional guidelines, they would fall by 17%. The dietary changes would also save almost 7 million life years over a 30-year period, mainly due to a reduction in coronary heart disease equivalent to an average increase in life expectancy of just over six months. Here is another opportunity to improve health and address climate change by focusing on the links between the two.

What are the Government doing to promote healthy eating in line with the WHO nutritional guidelines, so that the health of the population can benefit while also reducing greenhouse gases? Are they putting into practice lessons learned from the success of the campaigns to reduce smoking and drink-driving and applying them to healthy eating? There is some good news from right inside the NHS itself. The NHS Sustainable Development Unit has had considerable success in reducing the health sector’s greenhouse gas emissions.

If noble Lords agree that our environment has a major effect on public health, they have to be worried about the life sciences part of the industrial strategy. In his evidence to your Lordships’ Science and Technology Committee, Sir Paul Nurse recently said that the strategy should really be called the health science strategy, because it completely leaves out the environmental and other life sciences, in which the UK has considerable strength. Do the Government plan to publish a separate strategy for life sciences that are not directly linked to health? The reason I ask is that environmental sciences are very much connected with health and there is a danger that they will be ignored. Unlike many other departments, however, the Department of Health has a very large research budget, which should be used in this area. Sir Paul also observed that a great deal of money is being spent on genome sequencing, but that there has been very little work on how the environment affects the expression of the genome on the health of our people.

In conclusion, I very much welcome the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, to your Lordships’ House and look forward to his maiden speech; I am very honoured that he has chosen to use this debate for it. I also pay tribute to all the scientists and publishers who worked on the Lancet Countdown report, which has inspired this debate. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her valiant defence of the Government’s record. I will leave noble Lords to decide how many marks out of 10 it should get. I also thank all those who have spoken in this debate. It was a particular pleasure to hear the maiden speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger. Early in his speech, he mentioned that he had had to do a lot of risk assessments in his career. If I found that there was a 95% chance of something I was doing causing a negative effect, I would stop doing it. I am glad to see that the vast majority of the Members of your Lordships’ House are on the side of the 95% rather than the 5%. I believe it is in fact 99% of scientists who believe that it is human activity that is causing climate change. Indeed, they also tell us that, even if we stopped this very day all the activities that cause climate change, global warming would continue. It is a bit like an ocean liner: you switch off the engine but it still carries on for several miles. So the sooner we stop doing those things the better.

I was very struck by the comments of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby about how, as a community and a country, we need to take action, but also how we have individual responsibility. Some years ago, I made a new year’s resolution that, the next year, I would live more lightly on the planet. My most recent effort in that respect has been to build a passive house—a highly insulated house—and it is very gratifying to see how many public housing projects are now being built to that gold standard; it is terrific. I recommend such a new year’s resolution to all noble Lords. If we all take a step every year then we will be moving in the right direction.

Finally, I wish all noble Lords a happy Christmas and a green and healthy new year. I beg to move.

Motion agreed.