Widening effects of climate change on human health.
In an article published in the US-based The Atlantic newspaper, Dr. (MD) Paul Epstein, Harvard Medical School's associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment, highlighted several key ways that humanity is already being harmed by climate change effects.
These include a rise in heat-related illnesses and deaths; increased incidence of other diseases such as asthma, allergies, and infectious conditions; impact to humans through increased diseases in crops, forests, and marine life; and food insecurity.
Dr. Epstein explained that in addition to overall global temperature rise, nighttimes are also far less cool, while the added water vapor in the warmer atmosphere has made recent heat waves even deadlier.
Regarding the spread of infectious diseases, the author pointed out that their ranges are expanding faster than modeled projections. Warming and extreme weather have also contributed to marine life disease. For instance, in 2004 cruise-ship travelers were sickened by eating Vibrio bacteria-infected oysters from warming Alaskan waters.
Similarly, harmful algal blooms, which are the source of many of the world’s 350-plus dead zones, have been spreading in coastal environments, causing direct human harm as well as contaminating shellfish with toxins.
Finally, Dr. Epstein described how demands for resource-intensive meat, along with adverse weather events such as the recent East African drought are causing food shortages, food price increases, and consequent malnutrition, leading to further disease vulnerability and even potential conflict.
Our appreciation, Dr. Paul Epstein for this summary alert of how our health is endangered by the combined impacts of climate change.
May we rapidly halt the onset of these threats to our well-being and the planet through the actions needed to cool our planet. During a June 2011 videoconference in Mexico, Supreme Master Ching Hai explained the best way to stop climate change and prevent its impacts to both our health and the Earth.
Supreme Master Ching Hai : We should fuel the economy with the cleanest fuel to keep our air, our water and land clean and our health in good condition, because everything that is not good for the environment is not good for our health as well. All the chemicals of the agriculture, all the waste from the animal agriculture, run off into the river, into our stream, into the ocean, and we drink this water. We use the ocean. Everything will affect our health. http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/09/health-and-climate-change-7-ways-you-are-being-harmed/245607/ Extra News
That’s why people are more sick nowadays despite all the new inventions, new discoveries of medicines and different fashions, more hospitals than ever before, when we say we were not so developed right now.
Also, we should not just fuel our system with the clean fuel, but we also should fuel ourselves with the best, most clean and efficient energy source as well.
Our best fuel is vegan food, the life-saving organic vegan food. It benefits the climate physically and also creates a benevolent atmosphere around us.
Switzerland-based Living PlanIT, which is developing what it says will be the greenest urban region in Portugal, announces on November 11, 2011 that it is partnering with Japanese electronics company Hitachi for the creation of a comprehensive clean energy system to manage the city's infrastructure, technology and buildings. http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2124385/hitachi-links-worlds-greenest-city http://ajw.asahi.com/article/economy/press_releases/AJ2011111117187
As part of a multi-national initiative sponsored by the British Council, the work of 26 professional and amateur photographers in Turkey has been selected for exhibit across the country through March 2012, to raise awareness about the impact of climate change and encourage people toward planet-restoring actions.http://www.treehugger.com/culture/turkish-photographers-capture-climate-change.html http://www.crowdsourcing.org/document/turkish-photographers-capture-climate-change/8173
With elevated temperatures that are causing wildlife in the UK to exhibit spring and summer behaviors in mid-November 2011, meteorologists state that this is likely to be the warmest such month in the country's record-keeping history of 353 years. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/8887016/November-on-course-for-being-warmest-since-records-began.html