Apparently, NHS doctors have an enormous amount of free time on their hands. I must assume that’s the case because otherwise no one in their right mind would ask them to do this:
The Climate and Health Council, a collaboration of worldwide health organisations including the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society of Medicine, believes there is a direct link between climate change and better health.
Their controversial plan would see GPs and nurses give out advice to their patients on how to lower their carbon footprint.
The Council believes that climate change “threatens to radically undermine the health of all peoples”.
It believes health professionals are ideally placed to promote change because “we have ethical responsibility…..as well as the capacity to influence people and our political representatives to take the necessary action”.
The Council has been recently formed to study the health benefits of tackling climate change and promotes a range of ideas from reducing your carbon footprint by driving less and walking more to eating local, less processed food.
Ignore, for the moment, the propaganda aspects of this. Forget that, considering the events of the past week, this about as well-timed as a greasy fart in church.
No, note that last point, which seems to reference the long-debunked “food miles” bullshit. Note it well because even people whose job it is to panic about the climate frequently give bad advice. Punting the climate question for the moment, who expects doctors and nurses—who are stretched enough trying to keep idiots patients from putting their NG tubes up their asses—to give people sound advice on the climate? This is of micromanagement bullshit that has taken over the environmental movement now that conservatives will have nothing to do with it.
Coming soon. Lawyers (excuse me, solicitors) give advice on what to do in asteroid collisions. Geologists give healthy cooking tips. And don’t miss our special with Eliot Spitzer discussing ethics. Oh, wait. That last one is really happening at Slate, isn’t it?
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