Local News
April 25, 2008
Patz Highlights Cilmate Change, Health Risks
Dr. Jonathan Patz brings his message of health risks and climate change to Baltimore.
Barbara Pash
Associate Editor
There aren’t many people who can say they’ve won the Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. Jonathan Patz is one of them.
A Baltimore native raised in Pikesville, he became a bar mitzvah at Beth Am Congregation, and for that occasion he did an extra Torah portion at Chizuk Amuno Congregation.
Now a medical doctor with a master’s of public health degree from Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Patz is professor of environmental studies and population health sciences and director of global environmental health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Dr. Patz will talk on “Global Climate Change: Public Health and Public Ethics” Saturday, May 17, at 11:30 a.m., following Shabbat services at 10 a.m. at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, 7401 Park Heights Ave.
The Baltimore Jewish Times recently spoke with Dr. Patz.
BJT: Tell us about the Nobel Peace Prize, for which you were a co-recipient with former Vice President Al Gore in 2007.
Dr. Patz: The 2007 prize was awarded to Al Gore and to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I have been a lead author for the IPCC since 1995. There are hundreds of lead authors, and I’ve been the lead author on five reports, so I share the prize with Mr. Gore.
What are the health risks of climate change?
Climate change can greatly affect our health because it affects so many pathways of disease risk. Take, for example, the direct effect of heat waves. In Europe in 2003, extreme heat killed 70,000 people in less than two weeks.
Another key effect is air pollution, especially ground-level smog. We are very temperature-sensitive. Studies show that with a small amount of temperature rise in the U.S., we may see many more ozone red-alert days that are dangerous for asthmatics.
Other pathways are infectious diseases, especially those carried by insects. Insects are cold-blooded and a small increase in warming, even a half-degree, can have a dramatic effect, for example intensifying mosquito-borne disease.
Other infectious diseases are carried by water. Climatologists say it is not just global warming but water cycles — more floods, more droughts — that are affected by global warming. At Hopkins, I led a study on water-borne outbreaks of disease. Two-thirds were preceded by heavy rainfalls.
Some say that global warming is part of a natural cycle. Your opinion?
I’ve been on commissions with climatologists, and I can tell you what they say. And that is, the latest U.N. report concludes, with a 90 percent certainty, that the warming we have experienced, especially in the last 50 years, is from human activity, primarily from burning fossil fuels.
Climate is always changing. There are 11-year sunspot cycles. El Nino has a seven-year cycle. There are ocean cycles, Atlantic and Pacific, every 30 years, and inter-glacials every 20,000 years.
Given all these known drivers of climate variability, the majority of climatologists can still tease out a human influence on today’s warming. The solution is primarily burning less fossil fuels, but also part is protecting our rain forests.
Why has global warming become a political issue?
There are many vested interests in energy. Certainly, the coal and oil companies have a product to sell that is now dangerous for the environment. They have to diversify, and many are embracing the idea that they are now energy companies. We need to get off our oil addiction.
What about hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles?
The price of gas in the U.S. is artificially low. The true cost of gas should be $10 a gallon, and that would be plenty of incentive for people to build fuel-efficient cars. There already is a big demand for hybrids. The U.S. government is keeping the price of gas low. What do they gain? I don’t know. It’s insanity to me.
What country is the worst polluter?
Global warming is a major ethical crisis, especially for the U.S., because we have produced more greenhouse gases that cause global warming than any other country in the world. Our country ranks No. 1 in CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions for the last 50 years.
Is there a Jewish element?
Environmental stewardship is written into our religion. We really have an obligation to take care of the world. It’s in Jewish ethics. Look at the health effects of global warming, the suffering from a rise in malaria. It’s Africa, the developing world that will bear the brunt of it.