2023-08-11 10:04:21
Ms. Traidl-Hoffmann, the World Health Organization says climate change is the greatest health threat to humanity. Would you agree with that?
The greatest threat – and at the same time the greatest opportunity.
What is the threat, what is the opportunity?
Climate change and the destruction of nature could undo the health advances we have made. The survival of mankind depends on it. The chance is that we will finally become aware that we are sawing the branch we are sitting on. We thought we could rule the earth. We have forgotten that we are part of it.
Some appeal to people to practice humility again. The others want to promote self-empowerment to find technical solutions to climate change. Where are they standing?
Technology alone will not save humanity. Of many of the decisions we make today, we don’t even know what they mean in the end or what path dependencies we are entering into. We are fully committed to e-mobility and do not realize that it is not a solution if our cities end up full of e-cars, because then we still have the ultrafine particles in the air. Technologies will be part of the solution, but we have to think them through. We can’t afford to say in 20 years, oops, that was probably the wrong way. Nature itself gives us many solutions. In response to Elon Musk’s $100 million bid for carbon removal ideas, someone asked if trees could also apply.
You co-wrote a report for the federal government in which you called for changes in people’s behavior. Why is politics and society so difficult to convey?
It’s probably also a matter of money: too many are making money from destroying the planet.
Claudia Traidl-Hoffmann is Professor of Environmental Medicine at the University of Augsburg and Director of the Institute for Environmental Medicine at Helmholtz Munich. : Image: Micha Pawlitzki
In the end, what is more important to people: wealth or health?
Ask that to a sick person. . . I believe health is the new prosperity – and the greatest lever to achieve the urgently needed transformation of our society. It must be considered in all policy areas. We need to keep the health argument in mind for oil industry managers. They too have children, parents, grandchildren, and nothing should be worse for them than when they and those close to them become ill.
People smoke even though they know it will harm them. Until it’s too late. Why should humanity fare any differently?
There are social tipping points. Even when smoking. Then all of a sudden it’s frowned upon. A minor tipping point in climate policy was that Federal Health Minister Lauterbach finally announced a heat protection plan.
He was accused of hysteria on social media.
Apparently some now believe that the heat protection plan is the new lockdown. Of course that’s nonsense. Heat protection is health protection. Heat protection plans must create the framework conditions for us so that we can and are allowed to behave sensibly in the heat. A summary of the hot summer of 2022 was recently published in “Nature Medicine”, a very respected journal: 80,000 deaths in Europe. We can prevent that.
#Health #wealth