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Arguing by analogy, Salas and Hayhoe make valuable points about the urgent need for action on climate.
At both global and local levels, this will demand new types of teamwork, probably involving people and organisations that have never previously collaborated. At the local level, public health specialists are expected to promote collaboration across diverse organisations. A positive example within my experience would be the Crisis Support Team for Essex.[1] However, effective global teams are much harder to set up, as BMJ has detailed in many pieces about the pandemic. The cross-border trade in cocaine and heroin creates global health problems,[2] but decades of action have failed to achieve much beside promoting the proliferation of powerful gangsters and filling prisons with drug users. In planning collaborations around climate health, please learn from past failures, e.g. avoid criminalising members of Extinction Rebellion as terrorists ! [3]
[1] Caan W. Chekhov’s Corner: “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster. Journal of Public Health 2015; 37: 744-745.
[2] Caan W. Trade and health: dealing in death. Lancet 2009; 373: 894-895.
Re: Climate action for health and hope
Dear Editor
Arguing by analogy, Salas and Hayhoe make valuable points about the urgent need for action on climate.
At both global and local levels, this will demand new types of teamwork, probably involving people and organisations that have never previously collaborated. At the local level, public health specialists are expected to promote collaboration across diverse organisations. A positive example within my experience would be the Crisis Support Team for Essex.[1] However, effective global teams are much harder to set up, as BMJ has detailed in many pieces about the pandemic. The cross-border trade in cocaine and heroin creates global health problems,[2] but decades of action have failed to achieve much beside promoting the proliferation of powerful gangsters and filling prisons with drug users. In planning collaborations around climate health, please learn from past failures, e.g. avoid criminalising members of Extinction Rebellion as terrorists ! [3]
[1] Caan W. Chekhov’s Corner: “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster. Journal of Public Health 2015; 37: 744-745.
[2] Caan W. Trade and health: dealing in death. Lancet 2009; 373: 894-895.
[3] Dodd V, Grierson J. Terrorism police list Extinction Rebellion as extremist ideology. Guardian 2020, available online at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/10/xr-extinction-rebellion-...
Competing interests: I used to work with emergency planning teams