{"id":403419,"date":"2023-12-05T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-05T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=403419"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"Earth-is-running-a-fever-UN-climate-talks-focusing-on-the-contagious-effect-on-human-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/Earth-is-running-a-fever-UN-climate-talks-focusing-on-the-contagious-effect-on-human-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Earth is running a fever, UN climate talks focusing on the contagious effect on human health"},"content":{"rendered":"

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)\u2014<\/strong>With Planet Earth running a fever, U.N. climate talks focused Sunday on the contagious effects on human health.<\/p>\n

Under a brown haze over Dubai, the COP28 summit moved past two days of lofty rhetoric and calls for unity from top leaders to concerns on health issues like the deaths of at least 7 million people globally from air pollution each year and the spread of diseases like cholera and malaria as global warming upends weather systems.<\/p>\n

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was high time for the U.N. Conference of Parties on climate to hold its first health day in its 28th edition, saying the threats to health from climate change were \u201cimmediate and present.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the climate crisis is a health crisis, it\u2019s well overdue that 27 COPs have been and gone without a serious discussion of health,\u201d he said. \u201cUndoubtedly, health stands as the most compelling reason for taking climate action.\u201d<\/p>\n

After two days of speeches by dozens of presidents, prime ministers, royals and other top leaders\u2014in the background and off-stage\u2014participants were also turning attention to tough negotiations over the next nine days to push for more agreement on ways to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.<\/p>\n

Saturday capped off with the COP28 presidency announcing that 50 oil and gas companies had agreed to reach near-zero methane emissions and end routine flaring in their operations by 2030. They also pledged to reach \u201cnet zero\u201d for their operational emissions by 2050.<\/p>\n

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said \u201cthe promises made clearly fall short of what is required.\u201d<\/p>\n

In comments Sunday, Guterres called the methane emissions reductions \u201ca step in the right direction.\u201d But he criticized the net zero pledge for excluding emissions from fossil fuel consumption\u2014where the vast majority of the industry’s greenhouse gases come from\u2014and said the announcement provided no clarity on how the companies planned to reach their goals.<\/p>\n

“There must be no room for greenwashing,” he said.<\/p>\n

Temperature rises caused by the burning of oil, gas and coal have worsened natural disasters like floods, heat waves and drought, and caused many people to migrate to more temperate zones\u2014in addition to the negative knock-on effects for human health.<\/p>\n

John Kerry, the U.S. climate envoy, said it was \u201castonishing\u201d to him that it\u2019s taken so long for health to become a centerpiece of the climate discussion.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur bodies are ecosystems, and the world is an ecosystem,\u201d Kerry said. \u201cIf you poison our land and you poison our water and you poison our air, you poison our bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said his daughter Vanessa, who works with Tedros, \u201crepeats to me frequently that we should not measure progress on the climate crisis just by the degrees averted, but by the lives saved.\u201d<\/p>\n

A COP28 declaration backed by some 120 countries stressed the link between health and climate change. It made no mention of phasing out planet-warming fossil fuels, but pledged to support efforts to curb health care sector pollution, which accounts for 5% of global emissions, according to the WHO head.<\/p>\n

Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, head of climate and health at WHO, said heat alone has put pressure on the body and led to higher rates of infectious disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cClimate change doesn\u2019t need to be on a death certificate for us to be confident that climate change is causing deaths,\u201d Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, WHO\u2019s head of climate and health, said.<\/p>\n

Dubai, the largest city in oil-rich United Arab Emirates, often faces higher levels of air pollution than other places on Earth due to its location \u2014 and haze is common. The city sits on the coast of the Persian Gulf, but further inland begins the Empty Quarter, the massive desert that takes up a third of the Arabian Peninsula.<\/p>\n

The city’s boom has led to rapid construction, industrial areas and pollution from automobiles, adding to the impacts of sand and particulate churned by the desert winds. Some 3.5 million people now live in Dubai, up from 183,000 less than 50 years ago, and estimates suggest another million commute into the city-state each day for work.<\/p>\n

The Dubai government, on its web site devoted to the environment, listed its Air Quality Index level mostly at \u201cgood\u201d on Sunday. Switzerland-based IQAir, a technology company that sells air-quality monitoring products, listed Dubai as the city with the 18th-worst air quality in the world with \u201cmoderate\u201d air quality levels as of noon local time on Sunday. It cited high levels of two types of particulate matter in the air, and recommended mask-wearing for \u201csensitive groups\u201d and a reduction of outdoor exercise.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A woman pretends to resuscitate the Earth during a demonstration at the COP28 U.N. Climate Summit, Sunday, Dec. 3, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n

-AP
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