World Health Organization director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus calls the modern addiction to fossil fuels "an act of self-sabotage”. Photo Credit: GettyImages/NirutiStock
Hundreds of health associations around the world have demanded an end to fossil fuels.
The World Health Organization, the International Paediatric
Association, the World Medical Association, and the World Federation of
Public Health Associations are amongst almost 200 signatories of a
letter calling on governments to create a fossil fuel non-proliferation
treaty.
“The modern addiction to fossil fuels is not just an act of
environmental vandalism. From the health perspective, it is an act of
self-sabotage”, said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of
the World Health Organization.
Comparable to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the
proposed Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty would be an evidence-based
international agreement to control a category of substances well-known
to be harmful to human health: coal, oil and gas.
The modern addiction to fossil fuels is not just an act of environmental vandalism. From the health perspective, it is an act of self-sabotage.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general, World Health Organization
More than 1,000 health professionals and 3,000 scientists have backed
the campaign, which has been endorsed by the Dalai Lama, a hundred 100
Nobel laureates, and the Vatican.
The letter was initiated by the Global Climate and Health Alliance,
and Physicians for Social Responsibility with the support of the World
Health Organization, the WHO-Civil Society Working Group on Climate and
Health and Health Care Without Harm.
“We know that emissions have to be slashed to limit warming to safe
levels, we know fossil fuels are the greatest driver of emissions, and
we know that phasing out fossil fuels is the only way to reap many of
the health co-benefits of climate mitigation – so why then are
governments permitting new drilling, new mining and new pipelines?”,
said Liz Hanna, chair for environmental health at the World Federation
of Public Health Associations.
“The science on this is clear: new fossil fuel development is
completely incompatible with a healthy climate and a healthy future”.