GuelphToday received the following Letter to the Editor from Nikki Everts from Seniors for Climate Action Now! Guelph:
Dear Editor,
Polls show that top issues for Ontarians include the cost of food and housing, and health care.
Why has climate change all but disappeared from the public’s attention despite the fact that each of these topmost worries is influenced negatively by climate change? And, without immediate direct action to curb, mitigate and adapt to the increasingly severe weather events climate change causes, these “top issues” will only worsen, leaving us, the lowly public, to pay for climate-change’s increased costs and suffer from its growing impacts on our health and safety.
Regarding its health impacts, the WHO estimates climate-change driven health costs will rise globally to $3-5 billion by 2030. The situation in Ontario is already critical: 2.5 million Ontarians have no family doctor, over 1,000 ERs closed in 2023, and by Sep ’24, 2,000 patients/day were waiting on stretchers in hospital hallways. If global temperatures continue to rise unabated the frequency of intense storms, floods and droughts will increase as will the risk of injury, sickness and death from them. This puts more pressure on a health care system already on life support.
MPPs are accountable to us so let’s demand they take pressure off the health care system by slowing climate change: defund new fossil fuel exploration and incentivize the transition to cleaner energy. Second, strengthen health care by assigning resources to attract more doctors and increase the number of ERs.
This provincial election gives us the opportunity to choose candidates who will create policies and enact legislation to address a root cause of rapidly rising health threats – climate change: specifically, the use of fossil fuels that cause the rapid rise of global temperatures which drive extreme weather events, increasing risks to human health and safety.
Sincerely,
Nikki Everts
(Seniors for Climate Action Now! Guelph)
