“Patient earth is sick,” medical professionals concerned for the environment are telling us. A sick planet is going to make us sick too, and we’re not acting fast enough to fix it.
Five years ago, Covid-19 was spreading worldwide and the World Health Organisation declared the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern”. Lockdowns followed, causing severe social and economic disruption as governments took swift and drastic action to protect human health.
Reaction to the unfolding climate crisis, in contrast, is nowhere near as urgent and decisive, despite its dire impact on human health.
“The climate and nature crisis is the defining health emergency of the 21st century,” says Dr Ola Løkken Nordrum, an anaesthesiology trainee
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and operations officer with Irish Doctors for the Environment (IDE).
The group, a non-governmental organisation and registered charity comprising doctors, medical students and allied healthcare professionals, aims to create awareness, interest and implement action around environment health and the impact it has on patients’ health.
“Our health is intrinsically linked to the natural world. Quite simply, no nature, no health,” Dr Løkken Nordrum says.
Rising temperatures are causing thousands of excess deaths every year, the doctors say, quoting research on heat-related deaths in Europe. The hottest year on record was 2023.
Reaction to the warming planet, however, is a bit like the tale of the boiling frog.
Put a frog in boiling water and the frog feels the threat and jumps out. Put the frog in lukewarm water that’s slowly heating and the frog will remain and be “cooked” to death.
This metaphor is used to illustrate how humans can fail to recognise or react to gradually worsening situations until it’s too late.
Rising global temperatures and the inability to react to them make us the metaphorical and literal frogs.
IDE, along with sister organisations in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, have this month published a joint statement in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, urging their respective medical bodies and governments to take more decisive climate action.
“The science is clear. The data is clear. We must act now,” says Dr Løkken Nordrum. “Governments must formally recognise that the climate and biodiversity crisis is a health crisis. It must be treated as such.”
The doctors are calling for sustainability and planetary health to become core elements of medical education too.
If you think hospital waiting lists and access to GP care is challenging now, climate change is storing up more difficulties. Its effects will bring major challenges to the healthcare sector, doctors say.
Moving to a “1.5 degree lifestyle” means changing our consumption patterns and daily habits to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, as outlined in the Paris Agreement. It will entail drastically reducing our carbon footprint in areas like housing, food, transport, leisure and consumer goods.
The green transition, however, also has the possibility of greatly improving public health, the doctors say. Medical professionals must be a voice of science, informing the general public not only about the dangers of the climate and biodiversity crisis, but also the endless positives of taking action, IDE says.
Phasing out fossil fuels can stop further global warming and mean better air quality. Farming differently and swapping meat for a more plant-based diet will be better for our health. Walking and cycling more will be far better for our bodies too.
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“We need to transform commutes into opportunities for health, not pollution and frustration. A more plant-based diet is good for us and for the planet. We need to change the narrative, climate action is health action,” Dr Løkken Nordrum says.
Meanwhile, politicians bicker and delay, and the frog is heating up.
The Irish Government “has failed to take meaningful steps to address the climate crisis,” IDE says. “The first quarter of 2025 is already behind us. We cannot afford further delays.”
