Health and military professionals call for urgent action on climate change

A statement calling for urgent action on climate change has been issued by doctors, health professionals and military personnel participating in a London conference on the health and security implications of climate change convened by the British Medical Journal.

Professor Hugh Montgomery, Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at the University College London and Director of the UCL Institute for Human Health and Performance, talking to OneClimate at The Health and Security Perspectives of Climate Change conference that he helped to organise in London, 17th October 2011.

Related: A Stark Choice between climate justice and climate war where Canadian journalist Naomi Klein discusses militarism and climate change - Peoples Conference on Climate Change, Bolivia, April 2010.

A Stark Choice between climate justice and climate war

Canadian journalist Naomi Klein on militarism and climate change at the Peoples Conference on Climate Change, Bolivia, April 2010.



Klein outlines the effect of neoliberal policies in undermining disaster response through the privatisation and reduction of public infrastructure in developing countries. Policy decisions by industrial countries point to the creation of a new apartheid where the rich countries build defensive fortresses - border control - to exclude the movements of people displaced by the effects of climate change.

Kevin Rudd deciding to drop any plans for an introduction of a carbon price until 2013 is an explicit policy decision. So where do you think it fits in the choice between climate justice and climate war?


Want to read more? try Fight Climate Change, Not Wars at Naomi Klein's website or Pentagon's Role in Global Catastrophe: Add Climate Havoc to War Crimes at the Centre for Research on Globalization.

The Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general consuming as much as a mid sized country. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements. So while militarism and climate change was discussed at the Bolivian climate conference, it was completely absent from the Copenhagen negotiations.



Takver is a citizen journalist from Melbourne who has been writing on Climate Change issues and protests including Rising Sea Level, Ocean acidification, Environmental and social Impacts since 2004.