What really worries us as doctors.... I've worked with humanitarian organizations, and I had the honour of helping to produce the first brief between Doctors Without Borders and the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. We worry about the limits of adaptation. What I'm describing is already a challenge. We already have to urgently evacuate emergency departments in a matter of hours, and we know that we're going to continue to warm until at least mid-century. If we continue along the high-emissions pathway we're currently on, what.... My prior boss at the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change, Dr. Nick Watts, who's now in charge of decarbonizing the National Health Service, has described that as catastrophic.
What I am telling you as a physician is that we cannot guarantee that we will be able to continue delivering the services for health that you would expect as citizens of a high-income country through to the end of the century. Not only is this a critical risk to the health of today's children, but it is a critical risk to the health systems they depend on.