- Bishop Hill blog

The Lancet - the medical journal that brought you Andrew Wakefield and the return of mumps, measles and rubella - has a grandly named Commission on Climate Change and Health, which has announced its findings today. We are facing a crisis apparently.

Wake up at the back there.

This is fairly transparent politicking from a group of authors who might best be described as "the usual suspects" - Anthony Costello, Hugh Montgomery and Paul Ekins are all very familiar names round these parts and the lines they recite are familiar ones too. There is absolutely no pretence that the commission's report is anything other than an attempt to influence the political agenda ahead of the Paris conference, just as its previous report was an attempt to influence the result at Copenhagen. Here's the executive summary:

A collaboration between The Lancet and University College London, UK, resulting in the first UCL Lancet Commission report, setting out how climate change over the coming decades could have a disastrous effect on health across the globe. The report examines practical measures that can be taken now and in the short and medium term to control its effects.

Climate change could be the biggest global health threat of the 21st century. Effects on health of climate change will be felt by most populations in the next decades and put the lives and wellbeing of billions of people at increased risk. During this century, the earth's average surface temperature rises are likely to exceed the safe threshold of 2°C above pre-industrial average temperature.

This report outlines the major threats—both direct and indirect—to global health from climate change through changing patterns of disease, water and food insecurity, vulnerable shelter and human settlements, extreme climatic events, and population migration. Although vector-borne diseases will expand their reach and death tolls, the indirect effects of climate change on water, food security, and extreme climatic events are likely to have the biggest effect on global health.

A new advocacy and public health movement is needed urgently to bring together governments, international agencies, non-governmental organisations, communities, and academics from all disciplines to adapt to the effects of climate change on health.

The press are lapping this up, of course, and all incorporate lots of gory details: 250,000 deaths from global warming in 2030! Refugees! Hunger! Drought! Starvation! Collapsing loaves of bread!

And, as if you didn't know already, the solution lies in government. Lots of government. And lots of taxes on Bad Stuff. And subsidies for Good Stuff. As the Telegraph explains:

The report calls on governments to phase out coal-fired power plants and improve cities to promote healthy, greener lifestyles, making them better places to walk and cycle to cut pollution and obesity. They also recommend insulating more homes and buildings to cut energy use and cold-related deaths and disease.

Politicians should also bring in carbon pricing to push up the price of high carbon goods and services to make people change their behaviour, while reducing the cost of other taxes such as VAT, boosting investment or cutting the price of low-carbon technology.