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]