Health groups call for global fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty | Fossil fuels

The World Health Organization (WHO) and nearly 200 other health associations have issued an unprecedented call for a global fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty.

A call to action published on Wednesday urges governments to agree a legally binding plan to phase out fossil fuel exploration and production, similar to the Framework Convention on Tobacco, negotiated under the auspices of the WHO in 2003.

“Modern dependence on fossil fuels is not only an act of environmental vandalism. From a health perspective, it is an act of self-sabotage,” said WHO President Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, the head of the WHO’s climate change department, said the letter was a watershed moment. “This is the first time the health sector has come together to issue such a statement explicitly about fossil fuels,” he told the Guardian. “The current burden of death and disease from air pollution is comparable to tobacco use, while the long-term effects of fossil fuels on the Earth’s climate pose an existential threat to humanity – as do nuclear weapons.”

The campaign to end fossil fuel exploration and production has won broad support from the Dalai Lama and 100 other Nobel laureates, the Vatican, several cities and island states, more than 1,000 health professionals and nearly 3,000 scientists and academics.

The initiative aims to emulate the successes of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, signed in 1968, which has limited the spread of nuclear weapons and technology to some extent.

More countries have signed that treaty than any other arms limitation convention, although nuclear powers such as India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan have not.

Ira Helfand, Nobel Peace Prize winner and co-president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, said: “The two overriding issues of our era – the climate crisis and the danger of nuclear war – are deeply intertwined. The climate crisis is leading to greater international conflict and a growing risk of nuclear war , and nuclear war will cause catastrophic, abrupt climate disruption. The world must come together to prevent both of these existential threats.”

In emailed comments supporting the new initiative, laureate professor Noam Chomsky said: “Humans are marching towards an abyss. When we reach it, an unimaginable catastrophe is inevitable. There is a narrow window of opportunity to save ourselves and the countless other species that we are destroying with reckless abandon. There is still time to get off fossil fuels, not much. We will seize the chance or the human experiment will come to an undignified end.”

In addition to posing an existential threat to future generations, fossil fuels are a danger in the present, claiming more than 8 million lives prematurely in 2018, 18% of that year’s total deaths, according to a study.

Most of these deaths were caused by air pollution, but the climate crisis is also increasing the risk of heat-related diseases, creating ideal conditions for the transmission of food- and water-borne diseases and the spread of vector-borne diseases.

Extreme weather events such as droughts, floods and fires bring their own health risks, while fossil fuel workers and communities close to plants face a host of risks from oil spills and pipeline explosions to lung disease and cancer.

The new initiative says the clean energy transition must respect indigenous rights and be fair to “every worker, community and country”.

Ruth Etzel, co-chair of the International Pediatric Association’s environmental health group, said: “We have an ethical duty of care and we cannot remain silent about the global health risks that fossil fuels represent. Our message to government leaders around the world is this: The health of everyone alive today and for future generations depends on phasing out fossil fuels quickly, fairly and completely.”