Latest IPCC Report

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a litany of dire consequences that will arise - are already arising - unless we change our ways immediately. We must break free from addiction to carbon based fossil fuels. If we do not, our planetary life support systems will be so severely disrupted that stable, predictable weather patterns in the world's food producing regions will be changed forever. These weather patterns are already becoming erratic, less predictable than they used to be, more susceptible to floods and droughts. Food security is becoming one of the  casualties of climate change. Fresh water for drinking and irrigation is another early casualty.  Cascading secondary impacts on cultivated crops, vegetation, wild life, terrestrial and marine ecosystems, domestic animals and human beings are very likely severe enough to disrupt, perhaps to destroy essential life support systems, cause mass extinctions, bring about the demise of existing civilizations. If we ignore this report and its urgent recommendations for action, if we carry on with business as usual, the consequences for all life on earth, including orderly human life, will be catastrophic.  

See https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/ for details, summary for policy makers, graphics, video.

I've cared about the capacity of the environment (or ecosystem) to support life, including human life, since I was a medical student. I published an essay on this in 1949, a few months before I graduated from medical school. It was a rather poorly reasoned, poorly written essay, although I had the facts about right. In the mid 1980s I became aware of and concerned about what we were then calling the greenhouse effect which induced 'global warming' - more accurately described as global climate change. I wrote my first medical article on this in 1988; it was rejected by Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine, and published in Canadian Medical Association Journal badly mutilated by terrible copy editing. I studied the evidence in detail, was appointed chairman of a study group of the Royal Society of Canada on the health impacts of global change, including climate change, was briefly a Government of Canada reviewer of draft reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I convened and chaired a Health Canada international workshop on the public health implications of global climate change, summed up the evidence and needed action in a chapter on "Human Health in a Changing World" in my book Public Health and Human Ecology (McGraw Hill, New York, 1997) which I revised and partly rewrote with help from Colin Soskolne in Maxcy-Rosenau-Last Public Health and Preventive Medicine 15th Edition (McGraw Hill, New York, 2006). I spoke on public health impacts and needed actions on many occasions and published several other articles, alone or with others. I think it's fair to say I was quite knowledgeable on the health impacts of global climate change, and for a few years I could have been called an authority on the evidence and the issues. Perhaps I still am.

The scientific community worldwide has accepted the IPCC report and the validity of  the evidence, much of which consists of empirical observations. So far, unfortunately, the Canadian government has not, and seems set to persist with its 'business as usual' policies. I'm an old man and will soon be dead; but I have children and grandchildren and I care very much about their future. I assume the Canadian government and its cabinet ministers don't care about the future of their children and grandchildren, but care only about the short term profits of the energy industry. The most potent argument for getting rid of this present government is that we urgently need to act on climate change. Other parties in Canada have policies and platforms that promise meaningful action. I hope they will gather enough votes to throw Harper and his gang into the dustbin of history.