Climate of Our Future

By Nina Munteanu

Did you know that:
Close to 8% of all non-accidental deaths in Canada are caused by air pollution resulting from by-products of burning fossil fuels?
Following smog days, hospital admissions for respiratory problems increase by 6%, admissions of infants with respiratory problems increase by 15%?
Forecasts show that without reductions in fossil fuel consumption, in 20 years there will be a 60% increase in particulate emissions with a corresponding increase in respiratory illnesses, hospitalization and health care costs?

A report by the US National Academies’ National Research Council, Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises, warns that people can expect “climate surprises” in the form of “large, abrupt and unwelcome regional or global climatic events,” including drought, floods, extreme heat, hurricanes, (unseasonal tornadoes) and rising sea levels. Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, says the report indicates that “we’ve underestimated the rate of this change, we’ve underestimated the sensitivity of biological systems, we’ve underestimated the cost of global warming.”

Epstein and other authors published a paper in the Canadian Medical Association Journal where they suggested that the direct effects of climate change to humanity include: illness and deaths from heat waves, drought, floods, storms and the breakdown of systems in the aftermath of weather disasters. Indirect effects would include decreased crop productivity owing to pests and climate change, changing water availability, lower air quality, rising sea levels and animal-based diseases appearing in regions in which they had previously been unheard of.

The following two sites provide an excellent Canadian perspective on Climate Change:

The David Suzuki Foundation on Climate Change http://www.davidsuzuki.org/climate_change/

Environment Canada’s page on Climate Change http://www.ec.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=6EE576BE-1