Intended for healthcare professionals

Rapid response to:

Editor's Choice

Climate change: our new responsibility

BMJ 2008; 336 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.a529 (Published 26 June 2008) Cite this as: BMJ 2008;336:0

Rapid Response:

Over population, not medical education is the cause of carbon emissions

Dear Sir

I note with dismay that you continue to mount your obsessive attack on medical education. Having initially mounted an assault on the funding of medical conferences in what appeared to be a wholly biased and unbalanced manner; you are now attacking the very principles of conferences themselves on the very questionable grounds of the medical profession’s “carbon footprint”. On this occasion you have at least provided a balance of views, but apparently unable to resist your own bias you have chosen to criticise the antagonist to your view in “Editor’s Choice”. This seems a questionable editorial practice, but what is worse is that you have fabricated a quote in order to do so. James Drife makes an excellent case in favour of conferences, with which I whole heartedly agree (it would be interesting to know how many others do), however at no point in his article did “even he say that if you’re going to fly somewhere you should do more than just attend a conference”. He makes the point that the value of conferences, over suggested alternatives, is that you gain far more education from the experience than simply attending a lecture, but he makes no suggestion that there is any necessity to do anything more than attend the conference to enjoy this educational benefit.

The alternatives suggested by Malcolm Green whilst inferior educationally are also not cost free. The technology necessary to establish the sophisticated global communications required to mount an effective global videoconference is one of the reasons why we are facing the problem of global warming in the first place! Furthermore, the cost (in all senses) of establishing hundreds of “mini conference centres” all around the world, would almost certainly be greater than the cost of providing one large centre (economy of scale), whilst all the people travelling to their local regional centre would still incur “carbon cost” granted at a lower per capita expense. However, if Professor Green is right that far more people would attend a local conference rather than having to travel round the world, any advantages in reduced cost per person would be cancelled out by the increased numbers of attendees.

All these tips aimed at reducing an un-measurable amount of carbon to “set an example” are just pointless “show-boating”, they are too insignificant to achieve anything. The medical profession would do the world a far better service by actually doing something useful and tackling the real causes of increasing carbon emissions rather than making empty meaningless gestures. The real issue is the world’s over-population, every single one of us is a little carbon producing machine and if there were half as many of us there would be half as much carbon produced – it’s as simple as that.

Not driving your car 200 yards to the local shop once a week is not going to save the world, whilst many of the other suggestions are just trendy myths. Local food is only local if you grew it yourself or at least you obtained it from your local farm. How many of us live near a farm shop? Let alone one that can actually supply ALL the products we require. Ferrying customers to “local” shops is no cheaper than ferrying their products to the customers. Thousands of individuals driving all over the place to find local suppliers would cost far more than providing a central pick-up point where they could do it all in one simple (and carbon cheap) trip – it’s called a supermarket. OK we should make these minor gestures where we can, but it is not going to save the world.

Over-population used to be an issue that the medical profession did address 20 or 30 years ago but it seems to be another one of these issues that has become politically incorrect, it’s difficult to understand why. The only country that has attempted to address the issue has been constantly berated for it; well maybe China’s solution was not perfect, but in a week where it has been announced that our birth-rate is the highest for 30 years is it not time to see if we can improve on China's initial attempt. It will certainly achieve far more than us all turning our heating down by 1 degree – and then leaving it on an hour longer because the house is cold!

Yours sincerely

Dr Michael A James MD FRCP Consultant Cardiologist

Competing interests: None declared

Competing interests: No competing interests

11 July 2008
Michael A JAMES
Consultant
Taunton & Somerset Hospital, TA1 5DA