The importance of climate change to health

Anthropogenic climate change poses a grave and immediate danger to human health and survival around the world.1 Whether through heatwaves, extreme weather events, drought, starvation, altered disease vectors, or water contamination causing diarrhoea, poverty, mass migration, or resultant confl icts, all are at risk.1 Meanwhile, the substantial health and economic co-benefi ts of reducing climate change emissions are clear.2 International action is negotiated within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), governed by the decisions of the plenary body-the Conference of the Parties (COP). The consumption of fossil fuels has been postulated as the main contributor to both climate change and the global obesity epidemic.4 82% of delegates believed that rates of obesity and fossil fuel consumption were related.