There is increasing understanding that climate change will have profound, mostly harmful effects on human health. In this authoritative book, international experts examine long-recognized areas of health concern for populations vulnerable to climate change, describing effects that are both direct, such as heat waves, and indirect, such as via vector-borne diseases. Set in a broad international, economic, political and environmental context, this unique book expands these issues by reviving and championing a third ('tertiary') category of longer term impacts on global health: famine, population dislocation, conflict and collapse. This edition has an expanded foundation, with new chapters discussing nuclear war, population and limits to growth, among others. This lively yet scholarly resource explores all these issues, finishing with a practical discussion of avenues to reform. As Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, states in the foreword: 'Climate change interacts with many undesirable aspects of human behaviour, including inequality, racism and other manifestations of injustice. Climate change policies, as practised by most countries in the global North, not only interact with these long-standing forms of injustice, but exemplify a new form, of startling magnitude.' The book is dedicated to Tony McMichael, Will Steffen and Maurice King. This book will be invaluable for students, post-graduates, researchers and policy-makers in public health, climate change and medicine.
Author Biography:
Colin Butler (Edited By)
Colin's interest in and experience of health in the global South date to the early 1980s; his interest in climate change and health to 1989, the year he co-founded the NGOs BODHI US and BODHI Australia, each of which is particularly active in South Asia. Colin contributed to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2002-05) as a co-ordinating lead author for the conceptual framework and scenarios working groups, and to the health chapter of the 5th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. In 2014 Colin became the first Australian IPCC author to be arrested protesting climate change policy inertia. His academic qualifications include in medicine and epidemiology. Colin has published almost 300 articles, chapters and miscellanea in scholarly outlets, not only on climate change, but also on population growth, development, poverty and conflict.
Kerryn Higgs (Edited By)
Kerryn Higgs is an Australian writer. She received her PhD in Geography and Environmental Studies from the University of Tasmania, where she is now a University Associate. She is a Fellow of the International Centre of the Club of Rome.
