I only have 3 minutes
Learn: Watch this video where Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State for International Development talks about Climate Change and Global Poverty – Can you spot the link?
Act: Go around your house and turn off at the mains all the sockets that aren’t being used, turn off any lights or appliances you aren’t using, and see if you can’t turn your thermostat one degree lower – put on a jumper and more socks instead!
Got a minute left? Join Medsin’s ‘Healthy Planet’ Campaign
Advocate: Read this article on the life-saving effects of disaster risk reduction in Mozambique and share it with your friends via email, Twitter or Facebook. Help them understand the devastating effects of inaction and the benefits of action.
I only have 10 minutes
Learn: Watch this video on Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change
Act: have a flick through this Carbon Reduction Strategy for the NHS – do you understand the 10 vision statements of the 10 areas of carbon reduction? Is this enough?
Advocate: Write a letter to your PCT, hospital or clinic urging them to take action and reduce their own carbon footprint. Point out that health providers will be on the front line for the human consequences of climate change and should, therefore, be adapting health systems and promoting policies to mitigate climate change in their own backyard which will also achieve significant benefits for public health.
I have 30 minutes
Learn: Read this article to understand the link between Climate Change and Refugees – How will they be protected?
Read this excellent summary of the global health impacts of climate change - what do you think is the most severe health threat from climate change?
Act: Want a brilliant new year's resolution? Read the action points in the first section, turn all your lights off, then go to the governmental website Act on Copenhagen and measure your own carbon footprint (see the “act on Co2 carbon calculator on the right”) – How can you bypass politicians’ inability to act and directly lower your own footprint?
Itchy feet for more? Sign up to 10:10 and really make a difference by reducing your own emissions by 10% by the end of 2010.
Advocate: Send a personalised message to your MP on climate change and health; find you MP here.
You may want to use the following framework for your message
1. Argue the case for climate change and health. By this we mean the negative health impacts in the UK, the health co-benefits of policy change, and the duty of care to the population that the government and health professionals have to mitigate climate change.
2. Ask for your MP to write a letter arguing this case to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, urging stronger climate policy.
3. Ask your MP to write a letter arguing this case to the Secretary of State for Health, urging that they make climate change a higher priority in their health agenda and that they take climate change – both preparing for the health impacts and lowering carbon footprints – into account in all their deliberations.
4.Ask for your MP to join the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group
5. Ask for your MP to write back to you with feedback on what they did and on their responses
If you really don't have a minute to spare...
Stay in touch with the progress of Doctors of the World UK's disaster risk reduction programme in Haiti, help us reduce the devastating effects of climate change in the developing world by donating now, and use our Green Resources to better understand how climate change and health are invariable entwined, for better or for worse.
