The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists (RANZCO) has signed a climate change plea calling for the government to prioritise the climate emergency to save Australian lives.
In the open letter to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, which comes just weeks before a major climate conference in Glasgow, Australian doctors urged Australia to increase its efforts in bringing climate change under control, calling on the Prime Minister to commit to an ambitious national plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions, aligned to science-based targets, this decade.
“As doctors, we understand the imminent health threats posed by climate change and have seen them already emerge in Australia. The 2019-2020 bushfire season in Australia saw parts of the country afflicted by the poorest air quality in the world, with large numbers of the population enduring weeks of bushfire smoke and the related adverse health impacts,” the letter states.
“Since then, we have seen the stark impacts of extreme weather events playing out in the Northern Hemisphere in 2021. Flooding, fires and heatwaves not only have immediate health risks, but also come with the longer-term physical, economic and mental impacts of displacement, loss of life and loss of livelihoods.”
Doctors for the Environment Australia chair Dr John Van Der Kallen said healthcare professionals are already dealing with the reality of climate change in their surgeries and in emergency departments. “Failure to act urgently on climate change risks unmanageable threats to the health of all Australians.”
