9 October 2009

The Public Health Association (PHA) says a call from leading public health physicians, medics and academics for New Zealand to halve its greenhouse gas emissions, shows the high level of concern over the impact of climate change on health.

The PHA’s acting National Executive Officer, Keriata Stuart, says the article, published in today’s New Zealand Medical Journal, calls for this country to commit to substantial decreases in its greenhouse gas emissions, to avoid the worst impacts of climate change on human health, both here and internationally.

Ms Stuart says climate change is a huge threat to health.

“Without a reduction in global carbon dioxide levels, we could see an increase in vector-borne diseases such as dengue fever; a greater number of severe storms and floods, which can cause injury and death and trigger infectious disease outbreaks; an increase in illness and death from heat stress during heat waves; and an increase in the risk of infectious disease transmission if greater numbers of environmental refugees move from Asia and the Pacific to New Zealand.”

She says the PHA believes Government needs to introduce a rational system of carbon user charges, and consider ways of increasing public acceptability of these charges. This public acceptability could be gained by using the additional revenue to fund improvements in public transport, lowering income tax rates for low-income citizens when new carbon user charges are introduced, better educating the public about the impacts of the current unsustainable use of fossil fuels, and ensuring that the actual charges, when introduced, are not too high.

“We also believe central and local government must continue to promote energy efficiency and reduce emissions. This can be done a number of ways, including making government-owned building and housing stock more energy efficient, providing funding for routine emissions tests on vehicles when they get a warrant of fitness and looking for ways to reduce methane emissions.”

She says that, as pointed out in the NZMJ paper, New Zealand has the fourth highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the developed world, and one of the biggest increases in gross emissions since 1990.

“The PHA calls on Government to commit to substantial decreases in greenhouse gas emissions, without delay.”

ENDS