Health and climate change: what happened at COP26?

Climate research pioneer Prof. Michael E. Mann joins the podcast to lay out the most important things that happened at COP26.

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Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated using speech recognition technology and may differ from the original audio. In citing or otherwise referring to the contents of this podcast, please ensure that you are quoting the recorded audio rather than this transcript.

Gavin: Hello, welcome to The Lancet Voice. It's November 2021. I'm Gavin Cleaver. COP26 just finished, and we're going to discuss what happened with Professor Michael E. Mahon, who's Director of the Earth Systems Science Centre at Pennsylvania State University. But I'm also joined for this episode by my co host, Jesmy Baganal, and Tamara Lucas, who's Executive Editor at The Lancet Countdown, which is our annual publication on the health effects of climate change.

And Tamara, thanks so much for joining me and Jessamy on this one. Countdown was mentioned quite a lot during COP26, wasn't it? It's really nice to see these, the link between health and climate change becoming so prominent now in the discourse. 

Tamara: Thank you, Gavin, and thanks for having me today. Yes, exactly.

I think that health and climate change has finally become mainstream after many years of the team behind Lancet Countdown. pushing for these connections to be recognized and acknowledged. And I think it really has finally become something that has sunk through to general consciousness. And so COP26 really is the first COP meeting at which health has had significant presence.

And the Lancet countdown report I'm told was referenced and cited several times every day at the many talks that go on in the various pavilions. So it really has provided a resource at this meeting more so than ever before. 

Gavin: Yes, it's exciting to have Michael Mann on the podcast, of course, and you read his most recent book.

Tell us a little bit about what we're going to hear. 

Jessamy: Yeah, I read his book a couple of months ago now and was just, it was lovely to read it. It ties in a lot with many of the, much of the work that's being done on the commercial determinants of health because although the commercial determinants of health focus on commerce and how it impacts There's also a sort of set of tactics that go along with that in which industry try to exert power either through instrumentation or structural having looking at policy agendas or just discursive in terms of framing the narrative.

Michael Mann's new book, The New Climate Wars, it goes through these various different tactics and says that what we're moving from is denialism, because the evidence for climate change is very clear, to inactivism. which is more about delayism and more about doomism. So saying things like, oh, it's so complex, it's so difficult, how are we ever going to solve the climate crisis?

That plays into a narrative of, well, we're just here, fossil fuel industry carrying on. It was nice because it gives a lot of historical perspective, I think, about the run up to COP26 and it was great to see his voice so prominent, I think, in COP26, he was everywhere and all over the place and I think that's an important perspective given his career and the things that he himself has personally experienced in terms of the community.

Tactics against climate denial and things like that. 

Gavin: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Jessamy. Thanks, Tamara. Without further ado Let's go straight over to me and Jessamy talking to Professor Michael E. Mann

Jessamy: One of the things that I wanted to start off talking about was there's a some great pieces in the book where you Talk about the run up to the 2009 climate conference and the many things that derailed that conference and how that changed much of what's happened in the last 10 years. And I wonder whether looking at the run up to COP26 and the run up To 2009, whether there are stark differences that you can see that are either better or worse and what sort of influences we were seeing in the run up?

Michael: Yeah, thanks. It's a great question. And there are some similarities, but there's some striking differences as well. The similarity. The same, bad actors and petro states Russia, Saudi Arabia in particular, who sought to really stymie any progress back in COP 21 back in 2016, the Paris summit, are still at it.

But the methods, the tactics have changed dramatically, and that's really substantially what the new climate war is about. You're going even farther back the stolen emails of 2009, and back then, the science was still under attack, and that's what the email theft of the University of East Anglia there in the UK which was at the receiving end of of a hack we think state actors were probably involved.

The. Intent was to stymie progress at the Copenhagen summit of November 2009 by calling into question the basic scientific evidence of human caused climate change in by using stolen emails and cherry picking words and phrases and taking them out of context to try to make the scientists look bad to try to make it sound like scientists were fudging the data, taking words like trick which is used by scientists and mathematicians to denote a clever way to solving a vexing problem.

But you take that out of context and you can make it seem like, oh, these scientists were trying to pull a trick on the public. And that was the sort of game that they were playing. And it was intended to call the basic science into question as a means of trying to stop any meaningful progress.

on global climate action at the 2009 Copenhagen Summit. Back then, the forces of inaction, I call them the inactivists in the book really were engaged in a full on assault on the science. That's just not possible anymore. Now it's 2021. It's more than a decade later, and we're seeing the impacts of climate change play out in real time on our television screens, in our newspaper headlines.

And so the forces of inaction, the fossil fuel companies, the various advocacy groups that they fund, the politicians and conservative media outlets that help advocate their agenda, they can't call into question. the science anymore, because people can plainly see that it's happening. So they've turned to these other tactics, and that's what I call the new climate war.

These various other tactics, the aim of which ultimately is the same. To keep us addicted to fossil fuels, to prevent us from moving on, from moving towards clean, renewable energy. And whether they accomplish that task by calling the science into question, Or by dividing us, getting advocates fighting with each other, deflecting attention away from the needed policies towards individual behavior, as if it's just about us changing our light bulbs, delay tactics, geoengineering, carbon capture and sequestration, the promise of technological solutions down the road, maybe decades from now, as a way of taking the pressure off of us.

Taking action now, because the reality is that we do have the technology now to decarbonize our economy. All we're missing is the political will. So if they can delay action, kick the can down the road, that's a win for fossil fuel companies. And then finally, and so there's this alliteration in the book, because it's division, it's deflection it's delay, and it's doom mongering, despair mongering.

It sounds odd, but bad actors realize that if they can convince us that it's too late to do anything about the problem, it potentially leads us down the same path of inaction, of disengagement, as outright denial of the problem in the first place. And so we have to beware of the fact that bad actors are starting, are trying to stoke the flames of doomism as a way of taking Many who would otherwise be on the front lines advocating for change and pushing them to the sidelines because they're, they feel defeated.

They feel like there's nothing we can do. 

Gavin: But it is at base the same kind of bad faith and cynicism, really. 

Michael: Exactly. And the goal is the same. Here's the bottom line. The, the forces of inaction, the inactivists as they call them they don't care about the path we take. They just care about the destination.

They want us disengaged. They want us on the sidelines. And they don't care how. They get us there. And so we have to be aware of these tactics because they really are now the only real obstacles standing in our path as we seek to address this crisis. 

Jessamy: And out of interest, I know that we heard that the fossil fuel industry had the largest delegation at the client at COP26.

Did that feel like a very real presence? Were you witness to these things happening in real time? 

Michael: Yeah, I was participating remotely back here from central Pennsylvania, but in the modern world of the Internet and zoom and everything else, it's amazing how much you can participate in events from afar.

And so I was spending much of my time following what was going on. Talking about it, doing interviews engaging on this topic. And, it's funny that, it was a clever journalist who decided to count up the number of fossil fuel executives and show that it was literally, larger than the number of delegates from any one country.

So in that sense, it really was the largest delegation. Now, it's a tricky subject because on the one hand it's supposed to be inclusive and all stakeholders should be involved and it's difficult to deny that the fossil fuel industry is a stakeholder. We'd like to think of them as a stakeholder that would participate in good faith.

Yes, they have an economic interest in us remaining addicted to fossil fuels, but if they're going to be enlightened about it they recognize that these assets are going to be stranded. We're going to move on. And if they can get out in front, the energy companies that can get out in front on the green and clean energy transition are the ones who are going to win out in the future.

So Google. Energy companies obviously are stakeholders. They should be involved. What's unfortunate is even now we see them continue to engage to some extent in bad faith. For example, promoting the idea that the solution to the problem is massive carbon sequestration. Again it's a license to pollute.

This idea that we can clean up the problem down the road provides a license to fossil fuel interests to continue to extract and sell fossil fuels. And so we have to, at some point. level recognize that they're not engaged in the process in good faith. And we have to be very careful when it comes to what influence they are allowed to have, but it's certainly reasonable that they, and anyone else who is a stakeholder in this should have an opportunity to at least participate in the process.

And I think in the end, In my view, we didn't quite get the agreement many of us would have liked. There was some substantial progress that was made here. And that's despite the pushback from fossil fuel interests and some Petro States and, India, which played, an interesting role and we can talk more about that.

Because it's a glass half empty glass, half full sort of situation. There's things that India did that actually are good. And there are things that they did that aren't so good and the things that they did that aren't so good in part are a product of the fact that the Western world hasn't yet made the commitments that it has promised to the developing world and it's put states like India in an awkward position.

And it's, the politics are fraught it's a obviously a contentious, process. It's the worst of all possible global climate instruments, except for all the others. The reality is that, it is the only multilateral global negotiation process that we have. And so we can't throw out the conference of the parties.

We can't throw out the UNFCCC. We have to try. We have to engage and try to hold actors and participants accountable. But this is the best process we have. We have to stick with it and we have to do whatever we can to make it work. 

Jessamy: I was just going to ask for a bit more detail about the India situation.

Michael: India promised to, for the first time ever, to bring its net emissions to zero. Now. So that's a development and it turns out it's enough of a development that if you run the numbers, it actually brings the projections now for the first time below two degrees Celsius, if everybody keeps the obligations that are now on the table as of COP 26, the warming, which was headed towards four degrees Celsius at Cop 21 in Paris 2016.

We've brought that down now to two. That's not good enough. We've got to get down to one and a half. That's the good India. They made a commitment. But it's pretty late 2070. And so it's kicking the can pretty far down the road. And it's understandable. Globally, we have to bring our carbon emissions down to net zero by 2050.

The industrial countries have to do it sooner. The developing countries are, it's understood, are probably going to do it a little bit later. Now, India did at the last minute throw a bit of a monkey wrench into the works. There was an agreement in the final meeting statement that the countries of the world would work to phase out coal.

Which is critical because it's the most carbon intensive fossil fuel and we do have to ramp down coal. And and there can be really no new coal infrastructure if we're to remain, below that one and a half degree Celsius target. Now, so the language at the last minute, and there's an argument that can be made that it was in violation of parliamentary procedure as well, because there had already been an agreement, but India at the last minute said, No, we don't want phase out.

We want phase down, which is a weaker commitment. It's Yeah, we'll bring it down as to when we'll really phase it out. We're not sure yet. And so it's weakened. The overall statement coming out of the meeting, it had a negative. I would say emotional impact that was this high because China and the US had come back to the table late in the game and had made some real commitments.

China for the first time said it would phase down its coal emissions. That was a big development. And then you had this late breaking development where India comes in the last minute and says, no, we don't want to, we want to get rid of the phase out language. And. The only way to have agreement among the countries was to make a concession to India and water down that language a little bit now in India's defense.

They are probably frustrated that, the G7 countries and the major, industrial countries of the world didn't come up with the hundred billion dollars a year that had initially been promised to help the developing world leapfrog past the fossil fuel stage. If we're to expect them to develop clean energy infrastructure to develop their economies, it's got to be economically advantageous to them.

And that means that we, the industrial world. have to provide support and financing to help them do that. And so I think this was India's way of saying, you haven't really lived up to your end of the bargain. So this is really our only way right now of making a statement that we need to see more from you.

Here's the good news. We don't have to wait five years as we have in the past for each new reassessment. One of the agreements was that The countries of the world are going to come back to the table next year. And so all of this can be renegotiated within a year. And so that's the diplomatic work that needs to be done over in the months ahead is to make sure that the developing world and the industrial world are playing well together.

Because that's the real impediment right now to a more binding treaty. 

Gavin: Do you think the addition of coal and fossil fuels for the first time into this agreement was, being named actually as coal and fossil fuels was a surprise or was this something you expected going in?

Yeah, it's funny, 

Michael: isn't it? It's like it seems obvious, doesn't it? Like, how can you talk about acting on the climate crisis, decarbonizing? our economy without acknowledging the gorilla in the room, which is the fossil fuel industry. And it's a huge victory, I would say, for the fossil fuel industry that sort of language has been absent in past agreements.

So yeah, it's a welcome development that there's now an explicit acknowledgement that, It's oil, it's gas, it's coal. We've got to phase out, phase down, whatever you want to call it. We've got to transition away from fossil fuels towards clean and renewable energy. It was good to see that embraced in the language of the agreement.

Many of us would have liked to have seen an agreement to end subsidies. For the fossil fuel industry that are propping it up and making it more difficult for renewable energy to compete fairly in the marketplace. We would have liked to see a commitment on the part of the industrial countries of the world to fund no new fossil fuel infrastructure.

We have seen a commitment. On the part of the G7 countries and now on the part of China to no longer fund any overseas coal projects. That's a big development. That's good. So there were some good developments but yeah, in the end we still didn't What we need to keep warming below that dangerous one and a half celsius.

Gavin: What were your hopes going in and were you surprised I suppose by how much countries were willing to give? 

Michael: Yeah, like Russia, for example, made a commitment to net zero in 2060, Australia, similar. They don't want to talk about 2030. They don't want to talk about, binding commitments that will actually impact their actions right now, which a 2030 commitment really does, because if you're making a commitment about where you're going to be in 2030, you've got to be acting now.

If you're making a commitment about 2060, Who's going to be around then? How many of these politicians are even going to be around then? So there's still this feeling that the Petra States, the Russia's disappointingly Australia, which has basically joined them in recent years under the current government under the the Morrison government it's disappointing that, that there are no near meaningful near term commitments, but at least it's good that.

There is some sort of long term commitment on the part of these countries. That's actually still a positive development. It moves the ball down, down the field, but not far enough. 

Jessamy: Can we talk a bit about the China U. S. statement, and that, that collaboration, and the meaningfulness of that, the significance?

from your point of view? 

Michael: Yeah, what's really significant to me is that it's the same two negotiators. The Chinese lead negotiator, whose name I can't remember and probably won't pronounce correctly even if I try. And John Kerry, who was Secretary of State under Barack Obama and helped negotiate back in 2015 the bilateral agreement between the U.

S. and China, and it was for the U. S. To ramp down its carbon emissions, and it was for China to bring its emissions to a peak because first you got to bring it to a peak before you can start to bring them down and they're still developing their infrastructure. So that was the agreement that was made between the U.

S. and China, and it really set the stage for the Paris Agreement. And it really, created an atmosphere for a successful Paris Agreement that for the first time really included some meaningful commitments, no real legal enforcement mechanism. It's a name and shame mechanism of enforcement, which is to say, you become a pariah on the global stage, if you're not living up to your commitments, that's the enforcement mechanism.

So that was really significant and carbon emissions globally actually flattened out in, in the wake of, that Paris agreement. That's not enough. We're at the plateau, but we've got to come down the mountain and we've got to do that quickly. Halfway down 50 percent by 2030. So what's significant to me?

It was the same two negotiators. And by the way, China, after the 2015 bilateral agreement, started decommissioned decommissioning coal fired power plants. They were exceeding their obligations. So what that demonstrates to me is that China negotiates in good faith on these issues. They take their commitments seriously.

They expect to live up to them. And so now that we have the same two negotiators who negotiated that, that agreement back in 2015, and we saw that China really went beyond what they had committed because the U. S. was engaged, the U. S. was taking leadership. Then what happened? Donald Trump came in, unilaterally withdrawn from the Paris agreement, telegraphed to the rest of the world that the United States was no longer a good faith actor.

We lost a lot of credibility and it's going to take some time to build that back and that's part of what's going on here. Can China at this point, trust? That we will be able to make a good on our commitments. Is it right for them to worry that we might return to a Trump like government in the next couple of years?

That's the backdrop. It's the legacy of the loss of good faith that happened under the previous administration here in the United States, which I think has hampered a greater engagement by China, but they're back at the table now. And the commitments that they're making, I believe they plan to live up to.

Here's the good news. The bad news is there weren't a whole lot of details in that China US agreement. The good news is that Joe Biden is meeting with the Chinese president virtually next week to see, in part, if they can, put some meat on the bones and maybe fill in some of those details.

Jessamy: Which seems hopeful, doesn't it? And I just wondered whether we might move a bit to health because it was one of the first Conferences where health played quite a major feature and having had the career that you've had, the experiences that you've had in terms of framing these issues and the different stakeholders that have been involved, I wondered what you thought of this progression and how it's come about and how it might change some of the narratives.

Michael: I think it's really important, and really over the last decade or so, there's been a much greater involvement of the public health community in these conversations. I would say that the climate community has done a better job bringing them into the conversation and embracing this very important dimension.

Because it's something, it cuts across partisan lines to an extent. Of course, we live in such a divided world now. Even when it comes to public health there is rejection of science that, you know, that some people find ideologically in, inconvenient but everybody cares about the health of their children, right?

Nobody wants their child to, to have asthma and I've experienced this personally. We were in Phoenix, Arizona, staying at the airport after a visit to the Grand Canyon some years ago, I think that it's now about six years ago. And it was The hottest day that Phoenix had recorded in, in many years, in fact, you might have even read some of the headlines.

This was when planes couldn't take off at the Phoenix airport because it was so hot. 

Gavin: It's not like Phoenix is a cold place on a regular basis. The hottest 

Michael: day in Phoenix is pretty hot. Exactly. And that's, we were there for that. And that night at about three o'clock in the morning we were awakened.

Our daughter was awake. She couldn't breathe. We had to take her to the emergency room in Phoenix in the middle of the night and get an inhaler for her. It turns out that she was suffering from, I'm not sure what the term for it, but it's a sort of conditional asthma. That for example, when it's very hot like that, as hot as it was then you have larger ground level ozone pollution in urban areas like Phoenix.

And under those circumstances, she suffers asthma. And it's the first time we had ever seen it express itself. And that was one of those moments where I realized how profoundly my own life was touched by climate change, and it was through that health and medical connection. This is, by some measure, the greatest public health threat that we face.

Far more lives will be lost to the impacts of climate change to the climate crisis than will be lost to the covid. 19 crisis. And I think we have to keep that in perspective. This is the greatest public health crisis we've ever faced. It's the greatest crisis writ large, and it's the greatest crisis when it comes to any sort of aspect of modern life.

And that includes our health and the health of our children and grandchildren, which Everybody cares about 

Gavin: it. It still amazes me, the kind of dominant media narrative where you hear this kind of, hottest day so far, or coldest cold snap in this area, and the kind of strangely credulous reporting of things like the incredible hot period in Siberia and in Greenland that happened recently.

Do you think there's a way of changing that dominant media narrative? Because this so clearly affects health. 

Michael: I do. I think we have to talk about the lives that are literally being lost to extreme heat events which is one of the greatest killers there is now. Health quality just air quality and, and air pollution substantially fossil fuel burning, coal burning, and air quality issues that come with that.

Certainly China has been dealing with that. India right now, you may have read. Ironically, because of the role, some, the disappointing role to some people that they played at COP26 and right now they're dealing with a deadly air pollution problem right now which is. A product and part of the reliance on coal for energy and climate change.

Jessamy: And where do you see, potentially, that this field of research, of which it has, massively developed in the last five years, in terms of our understanding of the impact of climate change on health, where do you think that needs to move to, or does it need to carry on its current trajectory?

Does there need to be more work about dealing with the media and how the media represents it? What's your view on that? 

Michael: Yeah, it's a great point. I think, yeah, definitely connecting the dots for the public, making it clear that these extreme weather events. Don't occur in a vacuum. They are being precipitated by climate change, and there's solid science now.

Attribution science that allows us to do that. The Pacific Northwest heat dome, that deadly heat dome this summer in the Northwestern United States. There's science now to very clearly demonstrate that it just wouldn't have happened. An event of that magnitude wouldn't have happened in, in the absence of human caused Warming of the planet and then making, connecting that next level of dots and the deaths and the livelihoods, lives and livelihoods lost due to these devastating events, that's a consequence of climate change as well.

And so it's a two level. Connecting of the dots. We need the media first of all, to be connecting the dots between these extreme weather events and climate change, but then they've got to go beyond that. The tragedies that we're seeing play out and the lives lost are a consequence. In that sense of climate change and the media should be treating it that way and some media outlets and journalists are really good about that, to be perfectly honest, there are some really good journalists on the beat who are providing that framing.

But there are many who have a huge platform and aren't and we need to bring them along as well. 

Jessamy: I feel like you're an eternal optimist, I feel, from the things that I've read that you've written and all the rest of it. Having now finished COP26, I get the impression you're still, you're hopeful. You feel that next year people are going to come back.

We can carry on the work and. And you, there's still hope that 1. 5 degrees is a possibility. 

Michael: Nah, we're gonna fry the planet. There's just no ques No, I'm just No, it's just, I can only keep up the facade for so long. You've broken it down here. This is the final straw. No, I am an optimist.

I guess I would say I am a stubborn optimist is the term we're using these days. I'm committed to the notion. That as long as the only obstacles are political and not physical or technological, we still have a fighting chance. And it would be so wrong for us to not be fighting the good fight when it's still possible to prevail.

And so it really is only politics right now that stand in our way. And I remain ever optimistic that we can overcome those political obstacles in particular because of what's happening among the youth of our planet right now. And the fact that there were 40, 000 strong children marching in the streets of Glasgow.

To create awareness, to speak truth to power, to put pressure on those politicians who are negotiating in those conference rooms. And it did. It brought a lot of pressure. I actually think the progress that we made in Glasgow, while it wasn't as much as we would have liked to have seen, but it does keep us in the game.

There is still a path now. And that was the aim of Glasgow, ultimately, was to keep one point, hope for 1. 5 Celsius alive. And it is still alive. It's going to require a lot more work. Let's not pretend otherwise. But the progress we did make in substantial part was due to the way that the youth climate movement has re centered this conversation.

For too long, we allowed it to be in, in a domain that was very advantageous to fossil fuel interests. Oh, it's economics and policy analysis and scientific projections. But now it's so much more than that. It's about the ethical dimensions of this problem. About the need for us not to destroy this planet for our children and grandchildren.

What could be more important than that? They've helped recenter the conversation in that way. They've opened a door for us now It's you know incumbent upon the rest of us to walk through that door 

Gavin: What do you think needs to happen over the next year when you know, we're looking at it again this time next year What kind of, what events, what pressure needs to be kept up over the next 12 months for us to achieve an even more advantageous outcome next year?

Michael: Yeah, I think it's not as complicated as some people might think. If you look at what happened at the last minute there, the watering down of the language, that was a consequence of developed world not yet providing the obligations. Providing the resources that it had promised to the developing world, the G7 countries, the U.

S., Europe, et cetera, not yet providing the funding and the financing that they have promised to countries like India. And this was India's way of, of officially registering their displeasure with that. So that's what we need to work out over the next year. The industrial, it would be easy to blame it on India, and that's the wrong thing to do.

There are two partners right now in this tussle, and it's incumbent upon the industrial countries to come up with the resources that make it feasible. And in fact, advantageous to the developing world, again, first of all, to deal with the impacts that they're already suffering, they need resources for that, but they need resources to develop clean energy infrastructure because we can't afford for them to make the same mistake that we made in the developed world, in the industrial world.

And so that, those are the politics that need to be worked out over the next year. You're going to need bilateral or trilateral discussions between the US and China. And India, for example and the EU, four or five we need to be working at this from all angles so that a year later, we've done the advanced work necessary to now get the parties together with a more stringent commitment.

I think we can get India and China to sign on to a coal phase out with teeth in it, but that's going to require effort on our part. And 

Jessamy: it's funny, isn't it? Because we talk about tipping points. It's, most of the time negative, we're going to reach a tipping point and it's all going to be catastrophic.

But it is easy to see how putting up this money and showing that faith would be a tipping point and a catalyst for a very different journey towards net zero. And it doesn't feel like too big an ask, really, when you look at it objectively. 

Michael: Yeah, absolutely. I call these tipping points of the good kind.

We know what the tipping points of the bad kind are. It's the ice sheet collapse, sea level rise. We worry about those tipping points, how close we might be to them. But there are good tipping points, sociological, sociopolitical geopolitical tipping points. And I actually do think, as you're alluding to, that we're pretty close to one, that we're really close, that we have some obstacles in our path and we need to clear those away.

But we really are very close to finally achieving the commitment that we need here. And now would be the worst time to give up. And this has been one of my, principle points of commentary post Glasgow. I think it's dangerous to buy into some of the doomest framing that we're finding in some circles that, this idea that there's just no possibility for multilateral global agreements to act on the climate crisis.

That sort of framing is a gift to the polluters, to the bad actors. And in fact, some of the chief climate change Deniers who are funded by the fossil fuel industry have actually been promoting some of those doomist headlines They love this framing that cop 26 was a total disaster. There was no progress made There's no possibility of progress anymore through the un framework they love that sort of framing because it's an excuse for business as usual

Gavin: Thanks to professor michael. Iman there whose current book the new climate wars on many of the topics that we've just discussed is out now. I'm joined again by Jessamy Intamara and perhaps we could talk a bit more in depth about the Lancet countdown on health and climate change which as we mentioned is our annual report on the effects climate change has on health.

Jessamy it's important to have these kind of basic metrics isn't 

Jessamy: it? Because at its very best being able to have these metrics and being able to show this lack of progress and these very you know solid foundations are foundations for some sort of movement if every year we're still saying.

nothing's changing so obviously what's happened up to now is not good enough. Do you feel that with health being more prominent at COP26 with people referencing it more that maybe there's a tipping point or some you know that might build on or have you been through this before and they're like no this is not the case?

Tamara: I have quite mixed feelings about it because I think that if you look at the way that The report is structured with the five working groups and each of the indicator groups that they're responsible for. If you drill down and look, for instance, at food systems and water insecurity and see the trends for famine and drought, or if you look at the heatwave exposure and the fact that 2020 had record temperatures globally, which is what's reported in the new report because it's last year's data.

I think if you look at things at that level, then. then it's rather desperate and it's quite hard to think we've made progress. However, I think that the level of interest and engagement from the health community has reached a new level this year. I think there's been a number of collective initiatives led by the various independent bodies that have gathered people's signatures and had some momentum and cohesion, a lot of interest from other journals and interdisciplinary within health that has, I think, really tipped the balance slightly so that people cannot just ignore climate change anymore if they're working in any area of health, really.

So I think that, that's a positive. So I guess it depends whether you look in detail at the actual indicators, or if you look at the overall direction of travel for the health community. And I think there's a little bit of a mismatch, possibly, between one and the other. And I don't really know the answer for that.

But I think it's great that so many journals really are now, interested in and producing work in this area. And we see a lot of submissions in health and climate change. As Jess and me in particular, we see plenty of interest and research and there is funding in the right areas. So so it's really.

It feels like it is an area that actually can't be ignored or denied within any area of health. And it's great that there's so many journals, medical journals and other journals, social sciences, et cetera, that are really taking the health angle and moving it forward. So I guess it's a bit of a mixed picture.

Jessamy: Yeah. Yeah, I can totally align with that. I feel similar in Do you think that the health community can remain united about this topic and bring in other aspects and work, can that momentum continue? continue united or are there possibly signs of it fraying already? 

Tamara: No, that, that's another 

good question and it's quite difficult for me to answer because I feel that working in an academic journal I'm not really out on the edge of activism.

However I can't see any reason that would prevent the community from continuing to be cohesive and from having momentum. And I think that the number of journals that are now involved in this area. I'm thinking in particular of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change and the 200 journals that they mobilised to, to collectively write an editorial that we put our name to as well.

Richard Horton was one of the lead authors on that editorial that was published in September. So initiatives like that, I think, have enormous reach and enormous power to show that actually the problem transcends the human race. Silos and loyalty to one group or another. So I'd say yes I feel quite positive about that.

I think because that's a definite change that, I think even two years ago, I probably wouldn't have comprehended that happening. 

Gavin: We've seen as well, haven't we, over the last two years. The measures that states are prepared to take to protect the health of people, which have been obviously overwhelming, unprecedented.

Huge amounts of money thrown at the problem. Are you hopeful that one day we'll see that kind of dedication to health focused on the climate change problem? 

Tamara: Yes, I am. And I think that the bodies that, that fund the research into the problem, for instance, Wellcome, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation these big philanthropic institutions, the fact that they're creating whole departments focused on climate and health and that the governments of these countries, particularly the US and the UK, et cetera, are going alongside this and making an investment, I think that has to make a difference.

And I guess it will take a couple of years before we see the output, but it's I think it is already entering those slightly different but related arenas that really will have more impact as well over time. 

Gavin: So anyway Tamara, that's only another six months until the next countdown series of numbers are ready, if I'm going by your maths from earlier.

Tamara: That, that's right. We have the schedule for next year already drawn up by our colleagues in production. 

The moment it's published, we already move on to next year's planning because it's a very tight schedule. It's a large report around 20, 000 words and the number of authors, which is, currently around a hundred the number of meetings that are held for the whole author group and the process.

It really is like a commission, which for those people who don't know what a Lancet commission is it's a large body of work, a white paper that's independent and takes usually two or three years. So to do this annually, It's a huge task for the Countdown author team and for the people who work at Lancet Countdown as well.

So yes, we don't really have any break between publishing the current report and moving straight on to the next one. 

Gavin: Yeah, hopefully this time next year we can look at the new Lancet Countdown and we can look at COP27 as well, because one of the major pledges was to get all the parties back around the table in a year rather than five years.

And we can try and find something a bit more hopeful in the indicators. You never know. Thanks so much Tamara for joining us on the podcast. 

Tamara: No, thank you both for having me.

Gavin: Thanks as Lancet Voice. If you're interested in reading more on the Lancet Countdown, it can be read completely for free on our website, thelancet. com. And if you're somehow not already subscribed to The Lancet Voice, then you should be able to find us on the platform of your choosing. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again soon.