After the Second World War, poor countries partly made up for their delay in development. By making up for their economic shortcomings, they have also gained in life expectancy. They also took less time to approach our longevity than our level of wealth. This epidemiological transition, that is to say a massive change in the health of a population, has resulted in an extraordinary increase in life expectancy. Whereas the probability of death was previously relatively homogeneous, with high infant mortality, most humans can now expect to die after age 65. Countries have fought microbial diseases, then chronic diseases whose mortality they have at least succeeded in mitigating. But as they progressed, contemporary societies, whether affluent or not, disseminated the ingredients of a regression, and therefore perhaps of a new epidemiological transition, but in reverse.
They have, in fact, produced risks: environmental, behavioral and metabolic. There is nevertheless an inertia which explains the gap in decades between the appearance of dangers and the spread of diseases. But the effects of these risks are now palpable, in the form of a pandemic of chronic diseases, greater in volume than demographic evolution alone would have it. Pollution and metabolic risk are the two most problematic risks because of their scale and their growth out of control. Pollution must be understood in a broad sense, which includes air pollution and chemical pollution, which are both increasing in the world. The increased metabolic risk is dominated by the diabetes/obesity binomial. The planet has more than 422 million diabetics, 650 million obese and 1.9 billion overweight humans, according to the World Health Organization. No country observes a drop in the number of obese people. Pollution and metabolism are linked, as surrounding chemicals increase the likelihood of obesity, making it an environmental disease, not just a behavioral one.
Suddenly positive effect
While many countries that have the means to do so are (perhaps and finally) embarking on an environmental transition of depollution and decarbonization, the opportunity is clear to associate an epidemiological transition with it. Beyond the glaring need – the health of the French is variable and average – there are two advantages to doing so. The first relies on the resemblance between the two transitions, which is not a resemblance of details. Many of the necessary changes play for both transitions. Synchrony brings synergy. The abandonment of fossil transport leads to walking or cycling, which has the double advantage of cleaning up the air and increasing physical activity. A less animal diet reduces carbon emissions or equivalent, and is also better for health.
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