The 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change
concludes that responding to climate change could be the greatest
global health opportunity of the twenty-first century. Many
solutions to climate change offer significant health ‘co-benefits’,
reducing healthcare costs for often over-burdened health systems
and improving economic productivity. Alongside reducing
emissions, climate change adaptation is essential to protect health.
Decades-long lag in the climate system means that we are already
‘locked-in’ to many years of warming, and the associated impacts,
even if emissions drop sharply. Climate change affects the world’s
poorest countries earliest and most severely, despite them being least
responsible. Wealthier countries therefore have a responsibility to
support poor countries’ responses