Watch our end of year video here.
As the dust settles on the UN Climate talks in Glasgow, two things have become very clear: the world is capable of making the big commitments necessary to keep global warming to 1.5C, but it’s going to take a huge effort to get us there.
As doctors, we know that climate change is the greatest public health challenge of our time. It is already causing more hospital admissions due to heat, injury from storms, floods and bushfires, and increased vector-borne disease.
On the positive side however, we know that the measures needed to drive down emissions have enormous health benefits. Renewable energy reduces air pollution, active transport improves fitness, and plant-based diets reduce both methane emissions and a range of health problems. With our natural advantages, Australia can be a world leader in renewable energy production.
DEA has a plan to help Australia meets it scientific, moral and international obligations to cut emissions and protect nature to safeguard health.
DONATE NOW to help us achieve this goal.
Our plan has three parts:
We will build support to protect health by cutting greenhouse gas emissions this decade.
We will promote the protection of nature to maintain planetary and human health.
We will work in partnership with colleagues to make the health sector environmentally sustainable and prepared for the impacts of climate change.
To deliver this strategy we need to make climate and the environment priority issues for more Australians. We want to shift the views of people who are hesitant about climate action so policy makers understand that the overwhelming majority of Australians want stronger climate commitments. This means increasing our media and communications capacity so we can extend our reach to these more climate-conservative populations.
Today I’m asking you to consider an end of year donation to help us fund an increase in our media and communications capacity.
We know this is the crucial decade. We have to cut emissions drastically before 2030 to keep within 1.5C of global warming. If we can do this, it will have enormous health benefits.