Dr Christo­pher New­man

From “Britain’s Mar­tin Luther King”, Ja­maican-born GP Dr Harold Moody, to ‘The Moth­er of Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Med­i­cine’ Dr Al­ice Hamil­ton, doc­tors have a long his­to­ry of cam­paign­ing for fair­ness and pub­lic safe­ty. But change is of­ten painful­ly slow. “Every ar­ti­cle I wrote in those days,” said Hamil­ton ,”every speech I made, is full of plead­ing for the recog­ni­tion of lead poi­son­ing as a re­al and se­ri­ous med­ical prob­lem.”

Some feel that plead­ing doesn’t go far enough, like Dou­glas Lavoisi­er Con­ner, MD, and Robert Smith, MD, who were im­pris­oned for their roles in the Amer­i­can civ­il rights move­ment, promi­nent suf­fragette Dr Louisa Gar­rett An­der­son, who spent six weeks in jail for win­dow smash­ing in Lon­don, and Dr Arthur Chester­field-Evans, an Aus­tralian sur­geon, who reg­u­lar­ly sprayed il­le­gal graf­fi­ti on to­bac­co bill­boards in Aus­tralia in the 1970s with state­ments like, ‘They’re laugh­ing, you’re cough­ing’ and ‘Smile while you’ve still got teeth’.

Thanks in part to these peo­ple, few peo­ple now think it’s okay to en­slave oth­ers, al­low work­ers to in­hale dead­ly poi­son, that women should not vote, or ad­ver­tise cig­a­rettes. But many still think it’s okay to pol­lute our Earth, wa­ter, air and at­mos­phere, caus­ing cli­mate change and dis­rup­tion of na­ture’s bal­ance. The harm may not al­ways be as di­rect as cig­a­rette smoke caus­ing lung can­cer, but it is just as re­al. Hur­ri­cane Maria - which dam­aged al­most every build­ing in Do­mini­ca - was made five times more like­ly by cli­mate change. Hur­ri­cane He­lene, which re­cent­ly hit Flori­da, would on­ly have been around half as dam­ag­ing were it not for cli­mate change.

The Earth­Medic and Earth­Nurse foun­da­tion was set up in 2020 in Trinidad and To­ba­go to help make the sci­en­tif­ic con­nec­tion be­tween cli­mate change and health clear­er to the health pro­fes­sion and the wider pub­lic, and to plead with pol­i­cy mak­ers to make changes. As a re­sult of Earth Medic’s work, the Caribbean Health Al­liance for Cli­mate Ac­tion (CARHA­CA) was formed, which com­pris­es lead­ers from the med­ical as­so­ci­a­tions of Ja­maica, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia and Suri­name. It called for in­creas­ing pub­lic and health pro­fes­sion­al aware­ness of the im­pact of cli­mate change on health and for a strength­en­ing of com­mu­ni­ty and health sys­tem re­silience.

Dr Bri­an James, pres­i­dent of the Ja­maican Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion said, “Ja­maica must be a leader in cli­mate ac­tion. Kingston is the sec­ond city in the world where the coolest year af­ter 2005 is hot­ter than the hottest year ever. We are cross­ing a Ru­bi­con called cli­mate de­par­ture! In­dif­fer­ence and in­ac­tion are not vi­able op­tions!”

Im­por­tant though these words are, they’re still just words. Poli­cies and cul­ture must change, be­cause with­out that - on a glob­al scale – the heat, hur­ri­canes, wild­fires, sea lev­el rise, and coral reef dam­age will con­tin­ue to wors­en and harm lives and liveli­hoods. In­dif­fer­ence and in­ac­tion are not vi­able op­tions. Young peo­ple es­pe­cial­ly feel this way. More than 1 in 2 chil­dren world­wide have re­port­ed feel­ing sad, anx­ious, an­gry, pow­er­less, help­less or guilty about the cli­mate sit­u­a­tion. In hur­ri­cane-prone coun­tries, the num­bers were far high­er. Be­cause of this, many in our nurs­ing and med­ical schools are un­like­ly to tol­er­ate decades of dither­ing and de­lay from politi­cians. Though most may be fo­cused on their ca­reers and fam­i­lies, some may be­come Dou­glas Lavoisi­er Con­ners, or Dr Louisa Gar­rett An­der­sons. Peo­ple who aren’t pre­pared to plead any more.

It’s al­ready hap­pened in the UK. Ear­li­er this year, two doc­tors were sus­pend­ed for cli­mate protests. One - Dr Sarah Benn - spent 40 days in prison be­cause she re­peat­ed­ly blocked the en­trance to an oil ter­mi­nal in breach of a high court in­junc­tion. An­oth­er, Dr Warn­er, served six weeks for re­peat­ed­ly block­ing mo­tor­ways, al­so in breach of an in­junc­tion, as part of the In­su­late Britain cam­paign. Though both were pun­ished by courts of law, the UK’s med­ical reg­u­la­tor - the Gen­er­al Med­ical Coun­cil - claimed it had to pro­vide a fur­ther de­ter­rent, or risk bring­ing the en­tire med­ical pro­fes­sion - pre­sum­ably all 141,000 of us - in­to dis­re­pute. How­ev­er, the doc­tors’ union – the British Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion – dis­agreed, and is sup­port­ing Dr Benn in a high court ap­peal.

As the dam­age mounts, it will be hard­er to ig­nore. More and more health pro­fes­sion­als will seek to un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing and cru­cial­ly - feel - that cli­mate change is bad for our health. As this hap­pens, more and more ini­tia­tives and groups will form, to ed­u­cate, lob­by and ca­jole. But so­ci­ety is slow to change, and right now it needs rock­et fu­el. Some health pro­fes­sion­als feel that all too keen­ly and will en­gage in more con­fronta­tion­al strate­gies out of des­per­a­tion. We should be slow to judge them, be­cause they are nec­es­sary, though not suf­fi­cient, if we are to pre­vent the worst.

Dr Christo­pher New­man is a fam­i­ly physi­cian in the UK and mem­ber of the Earth­Medic and Earth­Nurse ad­vi­so­ry board.