Are you dreaming of a white Christmas? This will be my ninth Christmas in Europe and for the first time I am approaching it in top of white blanket of snow and with a very high probability of experiencing my first ever white Christmas. The evergreen island of Britain is now immaculately white. Does this mean that global warming is nothing but a staged theoretical situation forged by bored scientists with nothing better to do in their spare time?
I was surprised yesterday when I picked a local newspaper and found the following headline on its front page: “Global warming? Snowballs!!” (Referring to the current winter wonderland that we are experiencing in the UK). However, these two situations are not contradictory. On the contrary, extreme weather conditions like the current storm being experienced in the east of USA are a consequence of climate change. And if we don’t take action to mitigate climate change and heal our planet these extreme weather situations will become more frequent and even more intense.
But what can we do? In a scientific paper recently published in the Lancet, we aimed to evaluate the potential public health impact of transportation strategies aimed to reduce greenhouse emissions. Considering that transport accounts for a large part of all greenhouse-gas emissions (almost a quarter of all fossil fuel greenhouse emissions), we found that reducing motor vehicle use through more walking and cycling will not only help to mitigate climate change but should also substantially contribute to reducing obesity, heart disease and improving our trajectories of ageing.
Using greener transport alternatives and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions should not be the sole responsibility of governments and policy makers and all of us -citizens of planet earth- should be hold accountable for our decisions and their consequences. So lets think twice before we take the car and lets try to choose the bike or just walk instead of driving comfortably, but poisonously. This would not only help to mitigate current climate change but will also help us to keep fit, avoid heart disease and enjoy the most of this and many more white Christmases to come.
Finally as “tiny Tim” said: "A Merry Christmas to us all; God bless us, every one!"… and don’t forget to bless our planet!
Reference:
Woodcock J, Edwards P, Tonne C, Armstrong BG, Ashiru O, Banister D, Beevers S, Chalabi Z, Chowdhury Z, Cohen A, Franco OH, Haines A, Hickman R, Lindsay G, Mittal I, Mohan D, Tiwari G, Woodward A, Roberts I. Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: urban land transport. Lancet. 2009 Dec 5;374(9705):1930-43.http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)61714-1/fulltext (you must register to access the full article for free).
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