Okay, so I want to move to conclude here by saying that we're mobilizing to bring our voices to policymakers, and if we could advance several slides. Just want to mention that a meeting, our annual conference, starts this Friday evening with three workshops, and on Tuesday, May 25th, we're visiting Congress, and so I invite you all, please, to join us. You can register at our website, docsforclimate.org, and join us to bring your voice to Congress so that they know that we believe that climate solutions are health solutions and that we would like them to act. Thanks very much. Great. Thank you so much, Dr. Sarfati, and apologies to everyone for the technical snafus. We're going to extend for just an extra five minutes, so we'll have 10 minutes of questions coming up now, and you're still welcome to add questions in the question box and to also upvote on questions if you'd like. I want to start with one that I think we've all heard a lot about, and it combines a couple of questions, around population density and also as a corollary around longevity. Can you all talk a bit about that, about how population density and overpopulation plays into this, as well as the differing contributions of high and low and middle income countries? We can go around, and anyone who'd like to address that and has an activity, please, go ahead. Well, I can just say that when you think about what are the causes of natural resource consumption and climate change, it's a matter of it's population, but it's per person consumption. As far as the amount of effort we really need to focus on, the biggest problem is the per capita consumption, especially in industrialized countries like in the United States. The contribution of numbers of people on the earth compared to the disproportionate consumption of high consumers in rich countries, it's much more related to the overconsumption of wealthy individuals in wealthy countries. Yes, of course, population is important, but we are having a better handle on family planning worldwide than we are in current per capita consumption in countries. That's one answer that I have. Ed and Mona, anything you'd like to contribute on that? Well, I just would say... I'm sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, just very briefly, it helps to also think about the value of educating women and girls because of its obvious tie to helping break the cycle of thinking that large families are the only way out of poverty. So family planning plus educating women and girls on a global basis, that's the key to dealing with that problem. Mona? Yeah, I'll just leave it at that. Okay, great. Thank you. Excellent answers. I agree. So the next question is about how can we do this, right? So the latest UN IPCC report says that we need to cut emissions in half in less than a decade by 2030. And one of the pieces, of course, especially given your last responses that occurs to me is air travel. I know that that's one of the pieces where those of us in high-income countries particularly can, with one round-trip flight, exceed the carbon footprint of someone in a low-income country for a whole year just with one flight. I'm wondering if you all three could talk about things that you would encourage us as preventionists to particularly emphasize so that we can get to the top of this big and critical mountain in the next decade. Well, I'll just- You want to go first? Oh, okay, please. Sure, go ahead. Okay, I'll just say that very much of our global economy, we can shift easily and some parts will be difficult. Air travel may be the hardest change over to renewables. Of course, we need to do less air travel and like these conferences that we're doing, we're learning to do online conferences now much more. But I'll just say that we don't need to wait for technology. Technology is here. You saw the report from the International Agency report to say the cheapest way to generate electricity is from renewable energy and batteries. We've never had that before. So it's a matter of perverse subsidies. We have to end subsidies for oil and gas and coal. Coal is pretty much going downhill because no one's investing in coal because of same reasons. But I think we can almost flip a switch for many things that we do right now without waiting for a silver bullet. I mean, we're already, we can do this. And there are just a few parts of society where it will be difficult. But probably 80-90% of the things that happen with fossil fuels, you could pretty quickly replace. Have the political will and the way to go forward. I would add that, you know, we're in a position really to help move the needle. Each of us is in a position to help move that needle. I spoke before about the way that we can weigh in as respected health professionals with our policymakers and legislators. But we can also move, we can also do something about this personally. We all buy energy for our homes. And in many parts of the country, you have a choice of an alternative energy provider that makes all of the energy from clean renewables. And so you can make that choice to get energy yourself from clean renewable sources. We can also choose to travel in a way that is either active by walking or biking. Or if we can afford it, to buy an electric car. And the price of electric cars have also come down. And so we don't need to be putting emissions into the air when we make those trips around our neighborhood or for other purposes. And we can think about the products that we buy and the way that we use things and try to live more gently on the earth and eat less meat. And think about, you know, what are the benefits that we can get out of that? You know, think about how our neighborhoods are put together and what is planted there and how we can have more trees and greenery and richer soil. And everybody really can have a part in that, you know, that contribution to their community. And because we're tied to the health system, so many of us, we can weigh in with our hospitals and our health providers so that that sector of the economy, which is almost 10, which accounts for 10% of the greenhouse gas output, may actually be able to use energy more efficiently, use less, produce less waste, and decrease the negative environmental impact of the health sector. Thank you. And Ed, I wonder if you might conclude for us with an answer to that question. And also maybe just talking for a moment about how do we, as health professionals in the clinical context, and also in working with legislators and with others, how do we identify people who are receptive, who are at least at contemplation or ready to move forward in terms of action? What do climate health advocates look like? Yeah, I can't answer both of those in one minute, but so I'm going to only answer the first one. I hope you don't mind. Mona sort of talked about what we can do in our own lives. I actually want to look at just the opposite end of the continuum, what we together can accomplish if we lock arms and work together. And the most important thing we need to accomplish, keeping in mind this is a global problem, the most important thing we need to accomplish is to make sure that our nation's leaders, every one of our nation's leaders, goes to the global climate meetings in November of this year, the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, and is ready, willing, and able to make a major commitment to increasing our NDCs, our nationally determined contributions to the Paris Climate Agreement. If every country emulates the kind of commitment that Joe Biden has indicated he will make in the US, we stand a fighting chance. We stand a fighting chance. It's not a foregone conclusion that we can prevent public health catastrophe. But we know, as Jonathan has said earlier, we know exactly what we need to do to get that done. We know that the sooner we get it done, the more we benefit, both in terms of planetary health as well as human health. And so that's the most important thing each and every one of us can do, lobby our nation's leaders to go to the COP26 meeting in Glasgow in November and make a strong, greatly healthy, ambitious NDC, increase our commitments to improve the public health and planetary health. Thank you, Ed. And thank you, Mona and Alison and Jonathan and Katrina. Again, apologies to you all for the interruptions in this wonderful talk. But I can offer in terms of follow-up, wearing my hat as the chair of ACPM's Global Preventive Medicine Committee, that we'll make sure that you have opportunities to weigh in on some of these pieces. We will continue working with Drs. Maybach and Sarfati and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, as well as with Dr. Patz and happy to be a conduit to the college to make sure that we all get good opportunities to do so. All right. Well, with that, we are at 35 past the hour. Thank you, everyone, so much for those of you who persisted through all those bumps and look forward to seeing you in the rest of the meeting. Goodbye for now. Thanks, Erica. Thank you.

climate solutions

family planning

renewables

lobbying

per capita consumption