Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change launches landmark report

The Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change, written by experts from around the world, today reports three key findings:

· The effects of Climate Change are being felt today, pose a potentially catastrophic risk to human health, and have been underestimated.

· The technologies and finance required to address the problem can be made available, but the political will to connect them is lacking, whilst

· Such action on Climate Change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st Century: actions to reduce climate change are also good for health here and now.

Members of the UCL Energy Institute (UCL-Energy) UCL-Energy Director Bob Lowe, Professor Tadj Oreszczyn, Ian Hamilton and Steve Pye, along with of Lu Liang and Jun Yang of Tsinghua University, focussed on transition to a low-carbon economy as part of Working Group Three.

Professor Bob Lowe said:

"Climate Change has been acknowledged as one of the world's most serious problems, with the long term potential to undo many of the gains in public health of the last 50 years.  Actions to deal with it need to begin immediately, but effective global agreement has so far proven impossible to reach. 

The Lancet Commission Report highlights the connections between climate change and health, which range from long term and global to the short term, local and regional. Such connections have the potential to turn risk into opportunity. In particular, addressing local and regional pollution problems provides governments with the economic and political arguments to reduce CO2 emissions even in the absence of global agreements. Such reasoning may be a partial explanation for the recent downturn in coal consumption in China, one of the more optimistic developments of the last year."

UCL contribution to Lancet Commission blog