There Are No Healthy People on a Dying Planet
To say that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted human civilization is an understatement. As of April 26, more than 200,000 people have died from the disease and that number continues to rise. Country borders have been closed, stay-at-home orders issued, and physical distancing enforced. Economic devastation has rippled around the world; with the exception of essential services, many businesses have shut down entirely for the foreseeable future, and the International Labour Organization predicts the loss of 195 million full-time jobs in the next three months.
The global energy sector has also been crippled, with the price of crude oil recently plummeting into negative values due to reduced global demand (interesting fact: the price of oil is actually based on futures contracts to deliver oil rather than the commodity itself, which is why negative prices are possible). Notwithstanding the oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, which has since been resolved, global demand for oil has fallen by about 25 million barrels a day, according to analysts, due to COVID-19 and the resulting lockdowns, travel bans, and factory shutdowns.
It is clear that COVID-19 has upheaved our lives, our economy, and the way we use energy. However, as we continue to work together to flatten the curve, we also have a unique opportunity to think about rebuilding a cleaner, more sustainable world moving forward.
Nature is good for you
There is clear evidence supporting the health benefits of nature, and I’ll briefly present four interesting research papers that show this in different ways. Kardan et. al used satellite imagery and questionnaire-based self reports to see if there was any correlation between the density of trees of where someone lived in the city of Toronto with their general health. They found that “having 11 more trees in a city block decreases cardiometabolic conditions in ways comparable to an increase in annual personal income of $20,000 […] or being 1.4 years younger”. Cardiometabolic conditions includes hypertension, high blood glucose, obesity (both overweight and obese), high cholesterol, myocardial infarction, heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
Taylor & Kuo studied children who were clinically diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and had them go through three guided 20-minute walks through a city park, downtown, or residential area. The walks were one week apart, and children were randomized to the order of walks. After each walk, mental concentration was measured using the Digit Span Backwards test (asking the children to repeat lists of numbers backwards). They found that children with ADHD who took a 20-minute walk through a park showed improvements in concentration similar to the effect of methylphenidate (Ritalin), a first-line treatment for ADHD.
The evidence also shows that contributors to climate change, such as air pollution, clearly have health consequences. Peters et al. found that elevated concentrations of fine particles in the air may transiently elevate the risk of suffering a myocardial infarction within just a few hours of exposure. Wu et al. showed that an increase of only 1 µg/m³ in PM2.5 (a measure of fine particulate matter in the air with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns) was associated with a 15% increase in the COVID-19 death rate.
Humans evolved and adapted to living in nature, not the concrete jungle. Nature is better for your health.
“Planetary Health”
The health of humanity is intrinsically linked to the health of the environment. Our healthcare system can only function when it is built on a foundation of natural systems (oxygen, water, food, climate) and socioeconomic factors (job security, shelter, education), which are determinants of health. I forget where I heard this quote, but I think it is so powerful: there are no healthy people on a dying planet.
The health of the environment has deteriorated in recent decades. In 2015, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Lancet medical journal formed a commission and wrote a report on the concept of planetary health. I’m just going to copy and paste the executive summary because I think it is just fantastically written:
“By almost any measure, human health is better now than at any time in history. Life expectancy has soared from 47 years in 1950–1955, to 69 years in 2005–2010, and death rates in children younger than 5 years of age have decreased substantially, from 214 per thousand live births in 1950–1955, to 59 in 2005–2010. But these gains in human health have come at a high price: the degradation of nature’s ecological systems on a scale never seen in human history. A growing body of evidence shows that the health of humanity is intrinsically linked to the health of the environment, but by its actions humanity now threatens to destabilise the Earth’s key life-support systems.
As a Commission, we conclude that the continuing degradation of natural systems threatens to reverse the health gains seen over the last century. In short, we have mortgaged the health of future generations to realise economic and development gains in the present.”
— The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health
Summary and Conclusions
- The current pandemic is greatly affecting the way we use energy on a global scale.
- Research clearly shows positive health effects of nature.
- Human health is very much integrated and dependent on environmental health. If we care about human health, then we must care about the health of the environment as well.
Our pandemic recovery plan needs to include a concrete recommitment to address climate change, in addition to economic recovery, at all decision-making levels. For example, Canada is fourth largest producer and fourth largest exporter of oil in the world, and crude oil exports are estimated to contribute 4.5% to Canada’s gross domestic product (10% of exports, which is 45% of GDP) — how will the pandemic affect our economy in the long run? When this is all over, will we as a society reinvest in our fossil fuel resources, which is undeniably a vital component of our economy, or invest more into clean renewable energy?
To echo the words of the Planetary Health Commission: “we have been mortgaging the health of future generations to realise economic and development gains in the present”. What we choose to do now is up to us.
