Food is deeply engrained as a basic human need, and also a source of great pleasure. It is central to the very notion of what it means to be “alive.” Consuming the food of one’s desire and having choice could be seen as an indicator of individual liberties and rights, and people tend to […]
Category: Climate change
UK health alliance: The pathway to a healthy, low-carbon world is set
By Nick Watts, Nicola Wheeler, Pauline Castres The decision of the US President to quit the Paris Agreement will not trump that momentum. […]
Rising above the political tide: Our March for Science
In the wake of Saturday’s March for Science, Nahid Bhadelia and Afsan Bhadelia argue that scientists must sometimes join the political fray to advocate for inconvenient truths […]
Flying in the face of science: US environmental chief spreads climate change scepticism
Trump’s appointment of a climate science denier to a critical position shows us that we still have much to do to counteract climate change […]
David McCoy: Taxing diesel—now’s not the time to choke
David McCoy explains why we should tax diesel vehicles more. […]
Colin D Butler: Regional overload and the consequences it has for health
Almost 1% of the world population, mostly children, is forcibly displaced (including 11.7 million Syrians), an increase of over 50% from 2011. [1] Here I propose that the public health catastrophe in Syria be conceptualized as a canary case of “regional overload,” relevant to the emerging public health sub-specialty of planetary health. [2,3,4] […]
Chris Simms: The Global Risk Report 2016—who listened?
What has the global community learnt from the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risk Report released last January? The evidence suggests it has not learnt enough to prioritize and take effective steps to mediate risk and, instead, over the past 12 months we have seemed transfixed and bewildered by an onslaught of world events. As […]
Nick Hopkinson: Air quality—what’s the point of warnings?
The Thames is wreathed in smog—the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, issues an air quality alert and announces a new system of air quality warnings. There will be road-side dot matrix message signs on the busiest main roads into London, with instructions to switch engines off when stationary to reduce emissions. Air quality messages will […]
Pauline Castres: A coal free future on the horizon
UK Government pledge to end coal use by 2025 With the media abuzz with e-cigarettes and sugary drinks it is easy to overlook the health risks of coal plants. The black smoke from coal-fired power stations may not be as visible as it used to be but that does not mean that coal fumes’ impact […]
Jeph Mathias: The human face of inequality
Long ago an MSF (Doctors Without Borders) poster transfixed one junior doctor. Me. It was black and white. Two figures, photographed from behind, dominate the foreground: a poor black child, desperately malnourished and in need (yet another African war?), being led by a white man (a doctor maybe?) to a makeshift clinic that is but […]