Club Lunch: Climate Destabilisation & Its Impact On Our Health

Under present trajectories of carbon emissions, global surface temperatures are projected to increase between 3-5 degrees centigrade on average. This talk examined the consequences of progressive climate destabilisation as a result of atmospheric carbon emissions on human health and examine the likely pathways that health is affected.  In particular, the talk focuses on differentiating primary, secondary and tertiary health impacts and the ramifications as climate destabilisation under the most likely “business-as-almost-usual” scenario undermines the biological and social systems that support our day-to-days lives. In addition to addressing the more obvious primary effects of extreme weather on health, the secondary impacts on physical, social and psychological wellbeing will also be examined, as will the “downstream” tertiary effects on social, economic and political stability.

Richard Fielding is Professor of Medical Psychology in Public Health at the University of Hong Kong. With a background in medical laboratory sciences, zoology and a clinical psychologist by training he has worked in public health since coming to Hong Kong 35 years ago. In 2006 he became the first psychologist to be elected a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, Royal College of Physicians London.