Greenhouse effect: the big killer

The Washington Post reports on a WHO (World Health Organization) study according to which Earth's warming climate is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year, and these numbers could double by 2030.

Climate change is apparently driving up rates of malaria, malnutrition and diarrhea throughout the world, but especially in developing countries where the problem has not been addressed and where existing conditions make it worse.

"Those most vulnerable to climate change are not the ones responsible for causing it," said the study's lead author, Jonathan Patz, a professor at the university's Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and its department of population health sciences. "Our energy-consumptive lifestyles are having lethal impacts on other people around the world, especially the poor."

The regions most at risk from climate change include the Asian and South American Pacific coasts, as well as the Indian Ocean coast and sub-Saharan Africa. That's because climate-sensitive diseases are more prevalent there and because those regions are most vulnerable to abrupt shifts in climate.

"Climate change makes it even more important to combat diseases of the poor, many of which are highly climate-sensitive," said Campbell-Lendrum, who wrote the Nature paper with Patz. "We already have good evidence that there are a series of significant risks to health, which makes it even more important to curb greenhouse gas emissions in a short period of time."

Much remains uncertain about the impact of climate change:

Harvard Medical School's Center for Health and the Global Environment issued a report this month outlining two possible scenarios with varying degrees of extreme weather events. In one, warming would simply strain the world's resources; the second "would involve blows to the world economy sufficiently severe to cripple the resilience that enables affluent countries to respond to catastrophes."

But what does Bush care about that? It's not like he's in a position of power that would allow him to help fix the problem of global warming (we all know he's not the real president, just a placeholder,) especially since he doesn't believe it even exists. And he'll be long gone from the White House when the economy starts suffering from the global effects on public health of the greenhouse effect.

Worst president. Ever.