Amid an ongoing political turf war, Canadian doctors have thrown their weight behind carbon pricing calling it the best “treatment” for a major public health crisis afflicting the country: climate change.

In a series of new reports an international research collaboration details the substantial health toll that climate change is already taking and Canada is no exception.

In western Canada, smoke from raging wildfires has aggravated conditions like asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease forcing patients to emergency rooms in search of relief.

Research conducted in the wake of the unprecedented Fort McMurray wildfires show firefighters who fought the flames as they ripped through the northern Alberta city suffered significant mental health consequences. And, further east, more than 90 people died this summer as a wave of extreme heat gripped Quebec.

“We’ve seen how urgent this situation is,” said Dr. Courtney Howard, the lead author of the Canadian report and the president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

“We’re in a public health crisis with climate change and it’s important that we use the most evidence-based and effective treatment,” she said in an interview.

That treatment is carbon pricing, according to the international research collaboration the Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change. StarMetro reviewed the findings ahead of the public release.

In Canada, the recommendation is being backed by the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Public Health Association, a move Howard called “the strongest endorsement of carbon pricing by health authorities in Canada that’s happened.”

Dr. Gigi Osler, the president of the Canadian Medical Association, told StarMetro that “climate change is affecting our health, right now.”

In a statement, she added that Canada must show leadership on climate change and called it the “public health imperative of our time.”

Carbon pricing will make it more expensive to pollute.

“We know when we make more dangerous products more expensive people will gradually shift their habits,” Howard said, pointing to the taxes levied on cigarettes as an example.

Reducing pollution would have significant benefits for the health of Canadians as well as the planet, according to the Lancet report, which found that more than 7,000 people in Canada died prematurely from chronic exposure to air pollution in 2015.

The doctors’ endorsement comes amid a political struggle over the federal government’s plan to establish a carbon tax in provinces and territories that don’t implement a price on carbon themselves by January.

Conservative governments in both Ontario and Saskatchewan are now challenging the federal plan in court.

In the meantime, a new progress report from the United Nations Environment Programme says Canada is not on track to meet its Paris Agreement targets.

In response, federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said, “we have a plan to meet our Paris Agreement targets and we’re absolutely committed.”

She pointed to a plan to phase out coal power by 2030 and the carbon tax, as just two examples of the action her government has taken in its first three years of government.

The news that Canada may not be on track didn’t surprise Howard, who noted the UN update echoed the findings of Canada’s own auditor general last year.

But it is concerning given the findings of another report released earlier this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which determined that the worst impacts of climate change could be avoided if warming was limited to 1.5 C.

Currently, even if countries fulfil their current climate commitments, the world is on track to hit 3 C of warming by 2100, according the UN progress report released this week.

“We know we need to dramatically increase ambition on a worldwide scale and Canada is a developed country,” she said.

With more resources, comes more responsibility, she argued.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“We need to contribute at least our fair share and possibly even more and we know we’re not doing that.”

The Canadian Lancet report includes seven policy recommendations aimed at reducing the health impacts of climate change.

Alongside broad implementation of carbon pricing, the report calls for standardized surveillance of heat-related illness and deaths; the inclusion of climate change in medical and health sciences curriculum; more ambitious greenhouse gas emission and air pollution reduction targets and policies that support workers to transition out of fossil fuel industries; ensure coal is replaced with mostly non-emitting sources; and funding for further study into the mental health impacts of climate change.

Read more about: