From a Doomsday Scenario to one of Opportunities | Kim van Daalen | TEDxYouth@Nijmegen
[Music] I'm a PhD students in global public health at the University of Cambridge and as you can hear from my beautiful accent I grew up here in the Netherlands and this was me in 2017 after a heated discussion I had with a couple of friends about interesting developments in regard to climate change in the United States about which we probably don't really want to talk about anymore we decided that we wanted to do something to unite people we wanted to do something to advocate for more ambitious climate change action and as an email on you what do we decided to make a Facebook event and see how many people would show up and then this happens suddenly we stand in front of thousands of people and it was quite frightening for someone we used to hide under the table and then teacher asked for a question this was something that wouldn't have been possible without all the energy commitment and time that so many individuals stick into this but were we able to make the government's have more ambitious climate change policy maybe but this was not what stayed with me after it remains after the climate March well state with me was the positivity and the Solidarity that the people in this March shows because not only in the Netherlands was a smart happening but worldwide people were marching towards what a belief thing it changed there were people that were first-time marchers there were people that were climate change veterans but they were all there because they believed it could be different and they were smiling and dancing and they were singing songs and they were inspiring the people around them for the cause they have lived in but yet usually when we talk about climate change we see more a doom and gloom scenario we talk about a couple eggs or more extreme literally we are screwed and of course there are reasons for that probably the most sad example of last year is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report stating that we are not on track to reach to 1.5 degrees pre-industrial levels fact is the climate change crisis is worsening there is no doubt about deaths and grim environmental news is nothing new but the change is the question is is this fear really helping it does it not have a way of sort co-creating or brains is there a way that we can in a more positive way stimulate climate change action because when you think about it's trying to motivate people with a message that says well the climate change is so worse and it's so bad and we can't really do anything about it is that really gonna motivate any change or any action so I was thinking about this while I was a few weeks later on my way to the United Nations Climate Change Conference as part of the International Federation of medical students associations and it was there to advocate for more health into the climate change talks as someone who has been in health for almost my entire quite short life thinking about climate change in regard to health seems really natural because climate change has a way of destabilizing the rules of human civilization impacting almost every aspect of health but the question they got there any question you might not be wondering about as well is how does climate change even impact health and how has held any relation with climate change no well the fact is climate change rage has a wide impact of health effects and you already might have seen them in your own environment and if your own lives think for example about heat ways if you have grandparents you might have noticed that they have been more complaining about all the hot weather because there are more recent heat ways as a scientist I quite like to quote some statistics so the lens did one of the biggest biomedical journals stated deaths in 2017 a hundred and fifty seven million more people were exposed to extreme heat events in comparison with 2000's that is almost a hundred and sixty million more people but it is not only about heat waves we're also talking about cyclones we're talking about fluid we're talking about extreme fires and this is actually causing thousands of people to die as a result of extreme weather events and flutings my calls people not having the availability to nutrition or clean water resources resulting a famine resulting in hunger and even some parts of the world will not be able to be livable anymore and people will be forced into migration and that's not all think about diseases as malaria dengue or diarrhea these are diseases that will be heavily influenced by climate change as temperature rises and participate participation changes diseases that were previously only in certain regions of the world might be able to transmit to new regions of the world and all the progress that we made as a public health community you might now be overshadowed by climate change but one of the most relatable examples is probably the air we breathe in so as we are in a Netherlands at this moment I can imagine that everyone has been on a bike before meaning that we probably all have been on a bike behind car so we can now acknowledge that one breathing air pollutions is not that nice second of all it is not that healthy for our bodies the fact is that a lot of pollutants that are causing climate change are actually also toxic for our bodies they incorporate into our respiratory and circulatory systems causing damage to or brains to or heart and to our lungs and actually seven million people die each year as a result of exposure to air pollution and climate change impacts every aspect of human health attacks its influence infectious disease respiratory disease everything I just summed up and it's affects the most vulnerable people the hardest so it should be no surprise that climate change has been called the biggest global health threat of the 21st century which again sounds quite depressing so I was thinking about is in the most thinking maybe we could think about this another way maybe there's a way to give it more a positive view so next to death climber chances also because potentially the greatest public health intervention in history of humanity which sounds a lot more positive so I think that we can now agree that improve her health we would do well to have more active transport so for example to bike more to walk more to have more sustainable diets but have you ever thought about the fact that all those things that you do to improve your health are also reducing difficulties of climate change so for example if you want to reduce your exposure to air pollution to make sure that you have a good respiratory health then you might choose for clean energy which is also reducing climate change and it also works the other way around so for example a lot of the climate change mitigation strategies that we see promoted have a lot of so-called health care benefits meaning that they reduce water pollution air pollution and they reduce the chance of obesity or other diseases to summarize the environment and health are intimately connected it is not either or or but it is a win-win situation and there's another thing because usually when we talk about climate change we still have images of this or we think about some abstract thing in the future that is expressed in parts per million and that has some way of psychological distance a way that doesn't really seem to make us undertake any action it is really difficult for our brains to deal with deaths however health is a way that forms an over bridge despite psychological distance because there's nothing distant about health health is a way to make it personal to make it about you to make it about us it is a way to engage your broader public with the problem of climate change so I have seen how solidarity and positivity can lead to a huge engagement of people in people's climate March because of their positivity and the energy people were more committed to do something for this cause so I thought maybe thinking about health as a way as more positive view as one of opportunities as one of benefits that we can have and technique Lima Kings maybe every time we are talking about or lovely with six planets instead of just depicting the planet we can also depicts a picture of our lungs because although climate change might be the biggest global health threat it is also the biggest opportunity for global health