An end of year resolution: phase out fossil fuels – GWC Mag

As we approach the close of 2023, a hard, unforgiving year, consider this: the world, as we know it, is about to end. Life on Earth may not survive into the 22nd century; humanity has no more than 30 years. The window of opportunity to prevent both those extinction events is less than eight years, says doctor and climate activist Hugh Montgomery (youtube.com/watch?v=i2a-6KCAuKs).1

However, hope is important (doi:10.1136/bmj.o2411), and it exists in individual action as well as in government, corporate, industrial, and institutional commitments and strategies that deliver zero carbon emissions (www.nationalgrideso.com/future-energy/our-progress-towards-net-zero/net-zero-explained/what-net-zero-and-zero-carbon).23 Net zero is already not enough. Time is short and we must act, argues Montgomery.

In a similar vein, UN secretary general António Guterres believes that we have moved out of the era of global warming and into the “era of global boiling” (www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/27/scientists-july-world-hottest-month-record-climate-temperatures).4 We can still limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, he thinks, “but only with dramatic, immediate climate action.” The immediate action he seeks is political.

Heat related deaths are increasing. The Office for National Statistics estimated 4500 heat related deaths in the UK in 2022. Climate change also exacerbates inequalities, and rich people are better equipped to cope with extremes in temperature. “Reducing inequalities and tackling climate change” are mutually beneficial goals, suggest Simon Williams and Michael Marmot (doi:10.1136/bmj.p2844).5

Reform of healthcare is important for sustainability, and—in advance of COP28—the World Health Organization published an operational framework for resilient and low carbon health systems (www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240081888) (doi:10.1136/bmj.p2807).67 The framework, explains Sarah Briggs (doi:10.1136/bmj.p2856), comprises 10 key components that encompass different aspects of health systems, and it also extends to “health determining” sectors, such as agriculture, food, transport, and housing.8

But the principal driver of climate change is burning of fossil fuels (https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/299630).9 A new study by Jos Lelieveld and colleagues estimates that we can save five million deaths a year worldwide by phasing out fossil fuels and replacing them with clean, renewable energy sources (doi:10.1136/bmj-2023-077784).10 Most of these deaths, say Heli Lehtömaki and colleagues, are from cardiometabolic conditions, mediated by systemic inflammation and oxidative stress caused by air pollution (doi:10.1136/bmj.p2774).11

The benefits of phasing out fossil fuels would be healthier and longer lives, a narrowing of global health inequalities, and our best shot at averting the extinction events predicted by Montgomery. The arguments are clear, informed by science, and irrefutable. They are bound up in calls for WHO to declare the “indivisible climate and nature crisis as a global health emergency” (doi:10.1136/bmj.p2355),12 for divestment from fossil fuels (doi:10.1136/bmj.m167), and for phasing out fossil fuels by means of a binding non-proliferation treaty (fossilfueltreaty.org).121314

You might imagine that COP28, charged with saving humanity from climate extinction, would make an unequivocal stand on phasing out fossil fuels. Yet the worst fears about COP28 are being realised. We approach each COP with hope, born of desperation, and each time we witness a grand charade orchestrated by privileged people arriving in private jets (doi:10.1136/bmj.p2855www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/king-charles-sunak-cameron-cop28-private-jets-b2456050.html).1516

If you were to script a climate disaster, this would be it: select a chair who runs a fossil fuel company, downplay the scientific evidence on the harms of fossil fuels, water down the language of climate action, allow lobbyists from fossil fuel companies to attend in their thousands, and let politicians play to their domestic galleries while forests burn, ice caps melt, and oceans rise. From the veneer of soft loss and damage agreements (doi:10.1136/bmj.p2871) to insincere grandstanding about climate commitments (www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67591724),1718 COP28 is following this script.

In the meantime, as the “Earth system” teeters on the edge of five catastrophic climatic tipping points (https://global-tipping-points.org),19 as commitment and action on phasing out fossil fuels are delayed, as oil and gas companies accumulate increasingly obscene profits, as politicians fail to see beyond the political cycle, as health deteriorates, inequalities widen, and deaths mount, and as the public buys into antiscience propaganda, the media aligns to political agendas, and the social media trolls do their trolling, the clock ticks down on human civilisation.