There is increasing understanding that climate change will have profound,
mostly harmful effects on human health. In this authoritative book,
international experts examine long-recognized areas of health concern for
populations vulnerable to climate change, describing effects that are
both direct, such as heat waves, and indirect, such as via vector-borne diseases.
Set in a broad international, economic, political and environmental context,
this unique book expands these issues by reviving and championing a third (‘tertiary’)
category of longer term impacts on global health: famine, population dislocation,
conflict and collapse. This edition has an expanded foundation, with new chapters
discussing nuclear war, population and limits to growth, among others.
This lively yet scholarly resource explores all these issues, finishing with a practical
discussion of avenues to reform. As Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner
for Human Rights, states in the foreword: ‘Climate change interacts with many
undesirable aspects of human behaviour, including inequality, racism and other
manifestations of injustice. Climate change policies, as practised by most countries in
the global North, not only interact with these long-standing forms of injustice, but
exemplify a new form, of startling magnitude.’
The book is dedicated to Tony Mc Michael, Will Steffen and Maurice King.
This book will be invaluable for students, post-graduates, researchers and
policy-makers in public health, climate change and medicine.
Mengenai Pengarang
Kerryn Higgs is an Australian writer. She received her Ph D in Geography and Environmental Studies from the University of Tasmania (UTAS). Her 2014 book Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet (MIT Press) examined ideas about limits to material growth, resistance to those ideas, the elevation of growth as the central objective of policy-makers (especially since 1975 or so), and the mounting influence of corporate-funded think tanks dedicated to the propagation of neoliberal principles and to the denial of health and environmental dangers. Kerryn has published widely on the limits to growth debate, sustainability (including the Sustainable Development Goals), development, poverty and inequality. She taught history at Melbourne University and environmental studies at the University of New South Wales. She is currently a University Associate with the School of Political Science at UTAS and an Associate Member of the Club of Rome.