NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - climate change threatens far more than our environment. He has already led to the spread of infectious diseases and respiratory illnesses around the world and has contributed to thousands of deaths through heat waves and other extreme weather events. He has even fuelled these recent revolts in the Middle East and the North Africa.
Which is by Dan Ferber and Dr. Paul Epstein, the authors of a new book, Changing Planet, changing health: how the climate crisis threatens our health and that can do about it (University of California Press, April 2011).
The health of all human beings human is directly linked to how respond us, as communities, nations, and a global population, to the growing threat of the climate, said Ferber, a scientific journalist and the Epstein, the Deputy Director of the Centre of health and the environment at Harvard Medical School.
Ferber and Epstein spoke with Reuters Health Thursday on how malaria, the Lyme disease and cholera, as well as food shortages and malnutrition, are all of the increased risks becoming with the constant increase in temperatures. (See the live blog of the discussion here: http://bit.ly/lJnshE)
Although out of the humanity of corner has submitted itself in will be an effort in the world, they say that effort can be led by a surprising player: industry.
"Change of finance is a critical part of... to rewrite the rules"on management of climate, Epstein said."."
For the financial sector, there is much at stake, Epstein has continued.
"With uptake in extreme events - particularly because it affects food security at the global level and prices of food products - we will see a renewed interest on the part of investors and insurers in the stability of society,"he says. ". Already, "financial industry sometimes has in the last several decades were fully aware of the dangers and risks of climate change."
MANY OF THE THREATS, A CAUSE
Climate change is striking - human health and the stability of political and social, all sides, Epstein and Ferber said. On a daily basis, many of these impacts are hidden from the point of view - to ensure that you take back.
Even slight increase in temperature - a couple of degrees - can expand the habitat for pests that cause infectious diseases, malaria to the Kenya to Lyme disease in Maine, they said.
And the assertion that areas saturated with infectious diseases will move just, rather that to develop, is useful because it lacks other key points, said Epstein.
For example, in some parts of the Honduras it is too hot for malaria-carrying mosquitoes to thrive. "But it was so dry and hot that people have changed as well, and they moved in the area of the North, in the forest where there are lot of malaria,"he explained.""
Pests also target wildlife, decimating forests and increasing the risk of fire, as in the Rockies and the Cascades, where it is used to be too cool for these pests to venture at high altitude.
Another result of climate change: heat and carbon dioxide amplify the effects of asthma and allergies, especially in the cities where more and more children are respiratory problems.
And a combination of heat waves – as one who has killed thousands of Russians last summer - drought not only causes health crises local immediate but also threatens world health by destroying crops and increasing the price of food, the authors say.
Food availability can be the most urgent question of all.
"Our food, our air, our water, such are the questions that really underlie our public health," says Epstein. "" "". These are life-support systems. It is those who are ultimately the most critical and most sensitive to climate instability. ?
An unstable climate, Epstein explained, is directly linked to social and political unrest. "I think that we seek to increase the damages and social upheaval of climate and extreme instability," he said. "The earth itself can go a new balance, but we must decrease." We're pushing it hard. ?
A CHANCE FOR INDUSTRY
But it is not all bad news, and Ferber said there is reason to hope that we could be at a turning point in terms of acceptance and the climate change - a change which could be piloted in economics.
Some companies, he said, have already understood ways to profit and grow by switching of climate-friendly policies.
For example, Ferber said, the reinsurance company Swiss Re realized that it was possible to ensure a premium lower than oil platforms, wind farms because entire wind farms are not likely to be slaughtered in a disaster.
"Who benefited from the company, and it has also benefited the wind farm developers," said Ferber. "This type of creative thinking in the financial world can lead to win - win solutions."
He gave Stonyfield Farm as an example of another company that has developed how to enable the protection of the environment, in a business strategy as using microbes to ferment some of its dairy waste - deleting shipping it not be treated elsewhere. Stonyfield yogurt recipes now at the head of Kraft, the authors have say.
A NEW DIRECTION
Players in the industry is beginning to realize that central coal-fired, for example, may not be a good investment, Ferber said, communities can also take steps to make their streets, businesses and homes more healthy climate. Tree plantations, installation paths, and green roofs, and funding projects to assist green residents that their homes are all achievable steps that together could make a concrete difference, he suggested.
And the evidence shows that we are short of time to start taking these measures.
Epstein, said that humans have a need to significantly reduce fossil fuels and wood "to give the climate a chance of it at a level which would be viable" for the environmental and human health.
"The people across the country realize that we have a real problem on our hands," said Ferber. "" I'm really optimistic that more people are beginning to deal with this reality and say, ' what can we find for this problem? "".
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