HERE

Health Concern Spurs USA Senate on Global Warming Action



October 2007

 Amid growing evidence that 
scientists have underestimated the pace of global warming, public health 
experts on Tuesday urged U.S. lawmakers to support efforts to better 
understand the human health impacts from climate change.
 
"Climate change is a global health crisis," Michael McCally, a public 
health physician and executive director of Physicians for Social 
Responsibility told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. 
Scientists predict climate change will increase heat waves, fires, 
flooding, hurricanes and drought - all of which adversely impact human 
health, McCally said. 
Furthermore, a warming climate also has the potential to decrease air 
quality, negatively impact the quantity and quality of fresh water 
supplies and increase vector, food and water-borne diseases. 
"Weather is inextricably linked to health," said Julie Gerberding, 
director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, CDC. "We see that in the 
kinds of weather events that occur every day. We see it seasonally with 
the relationship to influenza, we see it over years in the consequences of 
things like El Nino, and I believe we will see this on a much a long 
time-frame in the context of our changing climate." 
Gerberding, citing the raging fires in California, the drought affecting 
the southeastern United States and this week's flooding in New Orleans, 
said CDC is increasingly "being asked to prepare and respond to these 
kinds of extreme weather events." 
 
Climate change is already affecting human health, said McCally, noting 
that the World Health Organization, WHO, estimates that global warming 
contributes to 150,000 deaths and five million illnesses every year. 
While those deaths and illnesses "may not be as apparent in the United 
States, the impacts of global warming are pervasive and will shortly 
affect every citizen in this country in some manner," he told the 
committee. 
State health officials are increasingly concerned, according to Susan 
Cooper, Tennessee health commissioner and member of the Association of 
State and Territorial Health Officers. 
Earlier this month the association unanimously adopted a position 
statement supporting the latest findings of the UN's Intergovernmental 
Panel on Climate Change and recognizing that climate change has 
far-reaching implications for public health. 
Cooper warned the committee that climate change could place "unprecedented 
demand" on the nation's public health system. 
 
The committee considered the issue as it prepares to finally consider 
global warming legislation and in light of a new study that finds 
atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, has 
increased 35 percent faster than expected since 2000. 
A team of scientists from the University of East Anglia, the Global Carbon 
Project and the British Antarctic Survey published research in the latest 
issue of the U.S. journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of 
Sciences" showing that improvements in the carbon intensity of the global 
economy have stalled since 2000 after improving for 30 years. They say 
this has led to the unexpected growth of atmospheric carbon dioxide. 
But whether this latest information - or the warnings of public health 
experts - will do much to sway opponents of global warming legislation is 
unclear. 
Several Republicans have already raised concerns about the proposal set 
for consideration by the Senate Environment and Public Works global 
warming and wildlife protection subcommittee. 

The bill, introduced last week by Senators Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut 
Independent, and John Warner, a Virginia Republican, aims to cut U.S. 
greenhouse gas emissions some 60 percent by 2050. 
A chief Republican complaint is the intent of leading Democrats to move 
the legislation quickly. A hearing by the subcommittee is set for 
Wednesday, with a tentative mark-up set for next week. 
Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat and chair of the Environment 
and Public Works Committee, has told colleagues she wants to get the bill 
through the full committee by December, before the United Nations annual 
climate change conference in Indonesia. At this meeting, negotiations are 
set to begin on a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, the world's 
only framework to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The protocol expires in 
2012. 
Six Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee sent 
Boxer a letter last week criticizing that plan, detailing concerns that 
several of them raised during Tuesday’s hearing. 
Boxer’s schedule "falls far short of a considered and deliberative 
process," said Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, who has 
famously called global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the 
American people." 

The committee has held "hearing after hearing after hearing on what people 
think about global warming or what might happen if we have global 
warming," Inhofe said. "But little on what will happen if we legislate 
global warming." 
Tuesday’s hearing was the 20th on climate change held this year by the 
committee. 
Senator Kit Bond, a Missouri Republican, said the hearing on public health 
impacts from climate change showed "there is something very vital missing" 
in the debate over the Lieberman/Warner bill. 
"No one is asking if a solution we are considering will inflict more harm 
on the American people than the things we are trying to avoid," Bond said. 

Inhofe echoed that concern and said the issue of health and global warming 
appears to have "fallen prey to politics," warning that public health will 
be adversely affected by "rash action to pass costly symbolic measures." 
Boxer rejected that concern outright, arguing that the science is clear 
and strong action is needed. 
"This is a looming crisis and we have a responsibility to act," Boxer 
said. "If we wait, then we could waste valuable time and people could be 
severely injured as a result. You can't close your eyes to the future and 
you can't close your eyes to the present." 
"We are so far behind," Boxer warned. "There are still people who say HIV 
doesn't cause AIDS and tobacco doesn't cause cancer - you are never going 
to have unanimity. Basically there is as close to unanimity as you can get 
from the scientists and among the doctors and yet it is so elusive here in 
the U.S. Senate. We are going to try to challenge that in this committee." 

---