The Biggest Opportunity for Global Health

[Applause]

when i started studying medicine six

years ago

i wanted to learn everything about

health i wanted to save lives

so here i am

at the end of my studies

talking about the biggest health

emergency of our time

the climate crisis

emergencies can be overwhelming which is

why in medicine

for every real deal emergency situation

we are equipped with the toolkit

and this is exactly what i brought you

today a climate emergency kit with five

simple tools

five tools

you can use and become part of the

life-saving team

here’s how

in med school i’ve learned

when we have an emergency patient

let’s say

after a really bad road accident

massive bleeding ruptured organs broken

bones blood everywhere

we don’t just stand still

we move

we get the emergency kit we trade

every second counts

what the emergency of the covet pandemic

showed us is that we can move

fast even on a global scale

we closed down whole airports we

mobilized huge amounts of money

and we developed corona concepts

for every single institution

so i said with the question

if we can make huge changes for covet

why are we not willing to make radical

changes for the climate crisis

well i don’t know about you but before

med school i simply didn’t know that the

climate crisis is a health emergency

most of us don’t

which isn’t a surprise because unlike

for kovitch our governments don’t

communicate that climate change is

damaging our health

today

to understand the emergency we need tool

number one

a brain

i hope you all got one with you as well

perf because in the hospital with every

incoming patient we need our brains to

analyze how

urgent the situation is

what’s the heart rate blood pressure the

temperature

so let’s check out our numbers

nine out of ten people living on this

planet breathe in polluted air

this leads to over 8.8 million deaths

every year

big numbers can be confusing

this means that over the past year

more people died due to air pollution

than because of covet

and on top of this number we can count

the deaths

caused by heat waves

storms flooding

and even if you survive those extreme

weather events

seriously impact our mental health

causing post-traumatic traumatic stress

disorder and anxiety

what about the temperature

right now we are on a 1.2 degree hotter

planet compared to pre-industrial levels

our planet has a fever

scientists say that 1.5 degrees is the

maximum for us to continue a healthy

life

take again our emergency patient

our team will do anything to avoid a

fever to keep the body temperature well

below 40 degrees because over 40 degrees

it gets hot and 41 degrees is like

and at 42 degrees

our patient dies

we don’t say

this patient will probably have a high

fever anyways sometime in the future

so isn’t it already too late

why should i even bother

it’s the same for the 1.5 degree goal

of course we can pass it

but it will cost millions of preventable

deaths

every degree

matters

this is why

last month during cop26 health

professionals

including myself and 45 million others

we send a letter to our governments

urging them to protect our health

and do everything they can for the 1.5

degree goal

this is not just any emergency the

climate crisis is the

biggest health emergency of our time

as i said

when our brain realizes that we avoid in

an emergency this can be overwhelming

last year

in the intensive care unit when we had a

patient crashing in front of us

i didn’t feel capable of handling this

situation on my own

i’m not a surgeon what am i supposed to

do

use tool number two

our voice

med school taught me don’t panic

prioritize

i can speak up to point out that there’s

a patient bleeding out in front of us

and asked my team to move

action

is better than anxiety

and this sounds quite simple

but that was a major aha moment for me

when it comes to the climate emergency

learning that this is a health emergency

i realized that anytime anywhere

i can speak up and ask questions

at any meeting at any conference at my

university i can talk with my colleagues

with my politicians with entrepreneurs

ngos

it’s even a good pickup line for a date

hi

how do you feel about having a future

of course this takes courage because it

might be uncomfortable to be the one who

asks questions

i think it’s even more uncomfortable to

have a patient dying in front of you and

not talking about it

so this is what i did i kept speaking up

asking for climate justice starting from

uni to our national medical association

ending up at the who last year and

here i am today

asking you

how do you feel about

saving lives

i’d say we start with our biggest

patient

planet earth

our planet

is bleeding

now think of the fossil fuels that we’re

extracting from earth

like the blood that our patient is

losing

there’s a maximum amount of blood one

can lose without dying

that’s our carbon budget

if we exceed this budget the patient

crashes

the latest ipcc report from the summer

says that at the current speed

our carbon budget will be finished in

eight years

now we can try to buy ourselves a bit

more time by catching up some blood and

putting it back into the patient or

sticking on pain dates

but this is not sufficient

if we really want to save our patients

lives

we need to prioritize where it bleeds

the most the fossil fuels

and stop the source immediately

so why does it feel that our governments

are moving in slow motion

well for moving faster we need tool

number three

our feet

in the hospital we move fast and we use

all the tools we’ve got we do further

clinical examination a cd scan we run a

blood screen we try we adapt we try

again

fighting the symptoms will help only in

short term but it won’t save our

patients life

and this image of symptoms fighting is

similar to the way our governments do

health and climate politics at the

moment in switzerland

in switzerland we call this

flashlight politik

band-aid politics

we see a problem

we stick a band-aid on

while blood

keeps running

our employees are flying around to meet

with customers

we just carbon offset the flights

to high co2 emissions

we just externalize them

subsidize harmful technologies

carbon capture

business as usual empty promises

blah blah blah

why is all the blood going

oops

this

is why the ipcc report calls for

systems change not climate change

or

as david attenborough puts it we cannot

be radical enough in tackling the

climate crisis

i know this word radical

well what surprised me is that from a

health perspective this makes total

sense

radical comes from the latin word radix

which means root

and this is exactly what we want for our

health we want to address the root of

the problem

back in school i learned that we as

individuals are responsible and need to

reduce our own common footprint

only last year i heard who actually

invented this carbon footprint

calculator

bp

one of the biggest fossil fuel companies

focusing on our own carbon footprint

keeps us busy

busy with band-aids

while missing out on the tiny detail

that only 100 companies

bp being one of them

are responsible for over 70 percent of

all global greenhouse gas emissions

going radical

down to the root of the problem

we find the paradigm of infinite growth

that there are no boundaries

but think about it

infinite growth in the body

in medicine this means cancer

our body has boundaries and so does our

planet with its limited resources

the planetary boundaries

there are nine of them

only within those nine boundaries

humans can live healthfully for

generations to come

and with this new paradigm of planetary

health

we can treat the system

we stop the bleeding we stop the fossil

fuels

job finished

wait a sec

our patient isn’t over the edge we still

have a fever damaged organs broken bones

we need help

and this is where tool number four comes

in

our hands

and complex cases like these in the

hospital we reach out for help we

involve many different experts

and work together with the team and

decide together

for the climate emergency the

catastrophe is

we don’t include the whole team

the ones in power

the politicians and ceos of big

corporates

they take decisions with that including

the people who are affected the most

which is absurd

because the people who are affected the

most are the least responsible for the

pollution

this is why

we call for climate

justice because in a warming world

these health inequities only increase

and there is no

green and healthy future without social

justice

the future

is intersectional

so what does this

mean for me

well

i can ask myself

who’s missing at my table

which voices are yet unheard and then i

use my hands to reach out

across

sectors across generations across

borders across genders and then i invite

everyone the whole diverse team to the

decision making table

we joined forces

one of the most astonishing things that

i learned over the past years from

working in hospitals all over the

country and abroad is

you don’t need to become a doctor to

save lives

if you want to save millions millions of

lives

address the climate emergency

it’s a win-win situation

you wouldn’t believe it but

radical climate action has such a good

return on investment that you would

dream of having your bank offering you

such a good rate

for example

if cities decide to build safe cycling

lanes and more people decide to take

their bike instead of the car

we are not only free of pollution but

physically active

which leads to less heart attacks and

increases our mental health

kaching life saved or

if we

stop eating meat every day and move to a

plant-based diet we not only massively

reduce emissions

but also reduce our risk of cancer

and improve our sexual function and who

doesn’t want that

this is why we call it

health co-benefits of climate action

the climate crisis

is not only the biggest threat to our

health

it’s also the biggest opportunity

this is where we come to the fifth and

final tool

what is the thing

the one thing that we’re all really

missing in our everyday lives

time

right

when in your weekly schedule do you take

the time

to really reflect on the emergency we’re

living in

with all its urgency

after the ipcc report was released in

summer

my fellow catalyst

lukina and i

we asked ourselves this exact same

question and wondered

if we keep being busy with our everyday

hustle

it’s getting freaking hot in here

and we don’t want to die of a heart

attack during a heat wave

we need a new

approach something everyone can do no

matter where no other when

so

we took

a break

an emergency break

everyone needs to pause for a coffee or

lunch right and we just dedicated one

break per week

to the climate emergency

it’s like in the hospital when before

rushing into the operating room we do a

quick break to check in with the team

it’s not about pausing to ignore the

emergency

during an emergency break we face how

urgent the situation really is

we

give space to all the emotions that can

come up

we listen to each other with empathy

with an open heart

and we dream we talk about our visions

and let new ideas grow

so

as you can see this is what we’ve been

doing and the idea has been spreading

all over switzerland almost as fast as

the new corona variant

because

everyone can do an emergency break

you can do one

you could start by asking two three

fellow students for lunch break or

colleagues from work

and instead of talking about the stock

market or your brunch plans for sunday

you just talk about the climate

emergency

look around in this room

we’re in one of the best business

schools in the world

many of you

will be future ceos

if you dedicate one break per week

now on december

we’d already have more than a thousand

potential ceos

addressing the emergency by the end of

the year

all i want for christmas

is you

joining the team to save lives

so

dear team

good news

looking at the time we do still have a

small enough opportunity

and no fancy medical tools needed

just

five simple tools

one

our brains to analyze the emergency

two

our voices

to speak up

three

our feet

to go radical

four

our hands to reach out and join forces

and five

a break

a regenerative moment for action

a healthy future

is possible

and it’s only waiting for you

to move

let’s go

[Applause]