Environmental health riskGlobal climate change is the greatest ever environmental health risk. Like other very dangerous environmental health risks the problem is POLLUTION, and over the past decades we have developed sophisticated and reliable methods to assess environmental risks for human population health
protection.
In the case of an injury, sometimes an emergency situation is obvious, and often only a careful examination looking for signs of a worst case outcome reveals an emergency response situation. The same applies to an environmental health threat.
The impacts of allowing global climate change to continue have been known for decades.
Pollution. The issue is one of pollution - sources of atmospheric greenhouse gas pollution which is the worst ever environmental health hazard. We have had many decades of experience in assessing risks of pollution.
However climate change assessments do not use a
pollution risk assessment approach.
A best guide we have is the 2010 A Human Health
Perspective on Climate Change published by Environmental Health Perspectives and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The flow chart (above) from the publication shows the many more essential aspects and connections of a proper environmental risk assessment that the climate change assessments.
The other essential aspect that all the environmental health science agrees with is the involvement at the start of public stakeholders.
The 2007 IPCC AR4 assessment showed clearly from all the impacts on billions of people and on future generations that 2°C is disastrous (as James Hansen has said) and that for vulnerable populations 1°C is the danger limit.