GPs ’should offer climate change advice to patients’
November 29, 2009 by Infowars Ireland
Doctors should give patients advice on climate change, a leading body of medical experts has claimed.
The Climate and Health Council, a collaboration of worldwide health organisations including the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society of Medicine, believes there is a direct link between climate change and better health.
Their controversial plan would see GPs and nurses give out advice to their patients on how to lower their carbon footprint.
The Council believes that climate change “threatens to radically undermine the health of all peoples”.
It believes health professionals are ideally placed to promote change because “we have ethical responsibility…..as well as the capacity to influence people and our political representatives to take the necessary action”.
The Council has been recently formed to study the health benefits of tackling climate change and promotes a range of ideas from reducing your carbon footprint by driving less and walking more to eating local, less processed food.
It wants to raise ‘health’ on the agenda of December’s UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen.
They believe that offering patients advice on how to lower their carbon footprint can be just as easy and achievable as helping them to stop smoking or eat a healthier diet.
Other proposals include for all developed nations to pay an extra five dollars a barrel on oil and a tax on airline tickets. This would go into a special fund to develop low-carbon alternatives to existing technologies, they say.
Prof Mike Gill, from the University of Surrey, who co-chairs the Climate and Health Council, outlined the plans for the medical journal The Lancet last week.
He said: “Climate change already affects human health, creating problems that will increase if no action is taken.
“Overall, what is good for tackling climate change is good for health. Who better to spell out this message than health professionals? “We have the evidence, a good story to tell that dramatically shifts the lens through which climate change is perceived, and we have public trust.”
He said the health service was often “muted” on the subject of climate change and needed to make its voice heard more. Read more…
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Having doctors push your climate change trash because its better and healthier to have a smaller carbon footprint? Yes, you know who had a small carbon front print? Caveman. This hoax is just an excuse to collect tax and help those people with alternative energy investments that cannot make it without government intervention. The next thing they will tell us is that you can reduce your cabon footprint by not living too long, with recommendations of a certain age to die. Of course, if you purchase a carbon off-set you can live past that age. Do you think the planet gives a damn who buys carbon credits, or what tax you pay on a barrel of oil. Good God.