Day 9- Epidemiology Prof warns court climate change is a “public health emergency”

It's been a sobering Monday morning in court with evidence presented by Dr Ian Roberts, Professor of Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Medicine. He explained the real and imminent threat to health posed by climate change. His warnings could hardly have been starker: we risk “generational genocide” as we “sleep walk into a nightmare”.  

The effects of Climate Change could be “unimaginably horrible” if we don't act now, with mass migration leading to “violence and conflict on an unprecedented scale”. He painted a bleak picture of a world with reduced food security, millions more children dying of preventable diseases and ecosystems across the world collapsing like dominoes.

He spelt out the reasons why the year 2000 World Health Organisation estimate of 150,000 deaths annually due to climate change is certainly out of date. For one thing experts now have a much greater awareness of the extent to which human health is jeopardised by climate change. Furthermore the 2000 model did not take into consideration the increasing number of unpredictable climate events, like heat-waves and floods, that cause mass casualties.

His evidence highlighted that the uncertainty inherent within climate change forecasts is one of the reasons that the problem is so challenging and dangerous, and that it's topsy turvy logic to use the uncertainties in predictions as a reason to ignore the warnings.

In this context of imminent doom the next witness, defendant Bradley Day, sounded reasonable and measured as he explained how he planned to take action to stop emissions from Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station.

When the prosecution suggested that the action had been planned in order just to make a point Bradley was quick to clarify things for the court. This plan was all about taking the action we desperately need and that our political process is so totally failing to deliver: action to stop emissions now.

Bradley had his eyes opened to the extent of the problem after attending a march against climate change in 2005, where he was persuaded that this was not just an environmental problem, but a global social problem with devastating human impacts. By the beginning of 2009 it was clear to him that the Copenhagen process was set up to fail and that ordinary people needed to step up to the challenge.

No one can say that awareness raising and campaigning did not have a big part to play in the action that was planned. The coming together of 114 people for an action to shut down a power station to save tens of thousands of tonnes of CO2 was a direct consequence of the long term outreach, public education and engagement that the climate movement has been involved in for many years. After all awareness raising is all well and good, but once we can all quote the science and know the risks, it's time to make the change happen ourselves.

If not now then when?