Climate Change

The fact that humans are having a discernible influence on climate change is now widely accepted. Global warming is expected to have significant health impacts both in Canada and around the world. The likely impacts include an increase in heat-related deaths and in deaths and disease due to air pollution, which is worsened by higher temperatures. More frequent and more intense severe weather events will result in increased deaths, injuries and disease in Canada, but the biggest impact will be felt in low-lying, heavily populated areas such as Bangladesh, particularly when coupled with sea level rise attendant upon global warming.

A variety of insect-borne diseases are likely to become more widespread and more readily transmissible as a result of global warming; the largest impact will be a hefty increase in the number of people around the world exposed to malaria, while in North America we need to be concerned about Lyme disease, dengue fever and the encephalitides. Global warming will also affect agricultural, forest and marine ecosystems, as well as the Arctic, with consequences for food production and for the life styles of Canada's First Nations, who depend on those ecosystems for their sustenance.

Because of the potentially profound long-term health impacts of climate change, CAPE has been actively involved in working with the David Suzuki Foundation, Pollution Probe, the Canadian Public Health Association, Health Canada's Office on Climate Change and Health and others to better understand the health effects of global change and the role of the health sector in addressing this issue.

For a good summary of the science and human health implications of global climate change, CAPE has a briefing paper on this topic.

Climate Change Categories:

More Information and Resources

Scientific American online has a good article from August 2000 on the issue.

The David Suzuki Foundation has a site devoted to taking action on climate change issues.

Other sites that address this issue directly are:

• Centre for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard School of Public Health
• International Society for Ecosystem Health
• CPHA Climate Change and Health project

The largest-ever ozone hole, roughly three times the size of the US, was detected over Antarctica on September 6, 2000, by NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer.

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