Brighton neurologist signs open letter to government on climate change

A professor of neurology from Brighton is among 18 doctors to have signed an open letter to the government urging action on climate change.

The letter from Nigel Leigh, of Brighton and Sussex Medical School, and a number of eminent colleagues was published in the BMJ (British Medical Journal).

Here is the full text of the letter …

We the undersigned write in support of Plan B’s challenge to the UK’s 2050 carbon target. We write on the basis of the following assumptions:

1. The current UK target of reducing emissions by 80 per cent compared to a 1990 baseline, does not align to the Paris Agreement objective of limiting warming to 1.5˚C and “well below” 2˚C.

2. The current UK target is approximately three times the UK’s share of the global carbon budget for a 50 per cent probability of limiting warming to 1.5˚C.

3. The UK government is aware that the current 2050 target is inconsistent with the Paris Agreement temperature objective.

Climate change has serious implications for our health, wellbeing, livelihoods, and the structure of organised society.

Its direct effects result from rising temperatures and changes in the frequency and strength of storms, floods, droughts, and heatwaves – with physical and mental health consequences.

The impacts of climate change will also be mediated through less direct pathways, including changes in crop yields, the burden and distribution of infectious disease, and in climate-induced population displacement and violent conflict.

Although many of these effects are already seen, their progression in the absence of climate change mitigation will greatly amplify existing global health challenges and inequalities.

The effects also threaten to undermine many of the social, economic, and environmental drivers of health that have contributed greatly to human progress.

Urgent and substantial climate change mitigation will help protect human health from the worst of these effects, and a comprehensive and ambitious response to climate change could transform the health of the world’s populations.

The potential benefits and opportunities are enormous, including cleaning the air of polluted cities, delivering more nutritious diets, ensuring energy, food, and water security, and alleviating poverty and social and economic inequalities.

As a self-proclaimed “climate leader” the UK government has a critical role to play in closing the “emissions gap” – ie, the gap between the current global trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions and the actions necessary to limit warming to 1.5˚C and “well below” 2˚C (and hence reduce the risks of disaster).

We are therefore disturbed and concerned by the government’s maintenance of a target despite awareness of its inadequacy.

We recognise that after so many years of procrastination there is no longer any guarantee that disaster can be avoided.

But if the government is aiming for failure then failure is all but guaranteed.

We urge the government to show real leadership and revise the carbon target in line with the Paris Agreement (and on the basis of equity and the precautionary principle) as a matter of urgent and immediate priority.

Dr Robin Stott, Board member, UK Health Alliance on Climate Change (ukhealthalliance.org), London

Prof Sue Atkinson, Co-chair, Climate and Health Council, London

Dr Michael Boulton-Jones, Retired physician, Glasgow

Dr Izzy Braithwaite, Junior doctor, University College London Hospital

Dr Mike Gill, Past co-chair, Climate and Health Council, London

Prof Sir Malcom Green, Professor Emeritus, Imperial College, and retired respiratory physician and Founder, British Lung Foundation

Dr Fiona Godlee, Editor in Chief, The BMJ, London

Dr Richard Horton, Editor in Chief, The Lancet, London

Prof Nigel Leigh, Professor of Neurology, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Professor Emeritus, King’s College London

Prof John Middleton, President, UK Faculty of Public Health, London

Prof John Moxham, Director of Clinical Strategy, King’s Health Partners, London

Prof Hugh Montgomery, Professor of Intensive Care Medicine, and Director, Centre for Human Health and Performance, University College London

Dr David Pencheon, Director, Sustainable Development Unit (SDU), Cambridge

Dr Robin Russell-Jones, Chair, Help Rescue The Planet, London

Prof Richard Smith, Chair, icddr,b (formerly, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease, Bangladesh), London

Dr Jo-anne Veltman, Specialty doctor, Paediatrics, Norwich

Prof John Walmsley, Past President, European College of Veterinary Surgeons

Dr Nick Watts, Director, UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, London