Health is at the heart of the climate crisis. The health of individuals, of communities and nations, of our non-human kin and even our planet’s health, are all at the mercy of global heating and climate change. Health professionals have an opportunity to use our trusted voices to centre health in the debate. Our advocacy can be a powerful tool and we have a responsibility to use it for the greater good. Although doctors may be traditionally conservative when it comes to expressing our political views, it is time to put our reticence aside. Climate change is a highly politicised issue, but its effects are health effects and that brings it squarely into the purview of the global health community, of which we are all part.

November 2023 saw the release of yet another troubling analysis by the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. At 1.14℃ of global heating people are reeling from the impacts of heatwaves, fires and smoke, sea level rise, floods and extreme weather events as well as the diseases, economic costs and displacement that go with them. As I write in December from my home in Adelaide Australia, thousands are without power due to last night’s flooding, my doctor friends in Perth are reeling from last week’s fires with its spike in ED presentations, and my news feed echoes with more of the same everywhere I look.

This is what 1.14℃ looks like. Our years of inaction mean we have all but locked in 1.5 degrees of warming and if we don’t rapidly shift gears now, a 2-degree world will be beyond reach. There has never been a more important time for doctors to advocate for the health of people and of the planet.

Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA) is a not-for-profit advocacy group of doctors who have put aside their traditional reticence to stand up for our planet’s health. Our members advocate for emissions reduction and the protection of biodiversity in recognition of the health impacts of fossil fuel combustion and deforestation. We work towards a sustainable health care system, knowing that our industry carries its own carbon footprint and that we will be increasingly treating the health impacts of our planet’s poor health.

DEA started around a kitchen table 22 years ago, when five doctors came together in recognition of our planet’s woes and asked themselves the question, “What can we do to help?”. They established DEA with the mission to “protect health through care of the environment” and started to work. Now we have 2000 members across Australia working together to educate and alert colleagues, patients, the public and politicians to the requirement for a healthy natural environment for good human health. DEA has led the climate and health movement in Australia, using our professional expertise to establish the health case for environmental protection.

Our advocacy has helped close coal-fired power stations, has stymied coal and gas expansion and protected native forests from logging. Just this week our members have highlighted the health harms of gas extraction at the Burrup Hub in Western Australia,  protesting outside Perth’s parliament house and garnering significant media attention in the process. Earlier this year, we allied with paediatricians in the Northern Territory, helping establish a parliamentary enquiry into the expansion of fracking and its processing there and we worked with the World Wildlife Fund to establish the health benefits of trees and continue to work against deforestation in Australia.

DEA has led the push for sustainable health care, calling for the formation of a sustainable health care unit and providing guidance on sustainability with our Green College Guidelines, All Electric Hospitals Guide and other resources. Australia now has a National Health, Sustainability and Climate Unit and we credit our advocacy as contributing to its establishment.

DEA members as doctors, have successfully championed the cause of climate and health to our professional bodies, working with the Australian Medical Association and medical colleges to amplify our voice; our medical education arm has developed high quality resources and worked to have them incorporated into the curricula of medical schools and teaching hospitals; our research education and advocacy committee have written countless parliamentary submissions and our mental health working group highlight the human psychological costs of climate change.

It is beyond the scope of this article to fully outline all the things that DEA does and has done, but the point to appreciate is that our members try to make a positive difference in a myriad of ways and that there are so many ways available to us as doctors. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the planetary health emergency and be paralysed into inaction because we cannot solve the whole problem alone, but the key is to remember that we can all do something and each individual thing makes a positive contribution.

I urge you, the reader, to consider what you can do. Maybe you can champion sustainability in your workplace, or lobby your local council for better bike infrastructure; maybe you can protest against a coal mine or do a talk on climate and health at your local library. Pick the thing that inspires you the most and have a go. The best piece of advice I ever received was from another climate advocate doctor, who said to me: “you don’t have to get an A, you just have to try.”

I am continually inspired by the work of doctors around me who do their best to make a difference. I am absolutely privileged to be leading DEA as executive director and certainly hope to inspire our members to continue all the planet-saving work they do. As WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Gehbreysus recently said “… we must continue to remind the world that the climate crisis is a health crisis.” Together we doctors are powerful, so let’s do the best that we can. Let’s treat climate change like the health problem it is, and work together for the health of humanity and of our beautiful suffering planet.

Author

Dr Kate Wylie

Kate is the Executive Director for Doctors for the Environment Australia, and a GP.

Declaration of interests

I have read and understood the BMJ Group policy on declaration of interests and declare the following interests:

• Employed as the Executive Director for Doctors for the Environment Australia
• Voluntary role as a member of the RACGPs Climate and Environmental Medicine Specific Interest Group