How to resolve the planet's 'biggest health threat'

“Human symptoms of climate change are unequivocal, potentially irreversible and affecting the health of populations around the world today,” said the Canadian Public Health Association.

When a group of researchers studying connections between public health and climate change in Canada tried to look into the impact of fracking on Indigenous communities, they made a startling discovery.

"There was not a single study published, ever, on the health impacts of fracking in Canada,” said Courtney Howard, president-elect at the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, at a presentation in Ottawa on Thursday.

Howard was speaking as a co-author of the Canada brief of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change. The Lancet Countdown is a global, interdisciplinary partnership of 24 academic institutions and intergovernmental organizations, organized by the influential Lancet medical journal.

The yearly report, the first of its kind, is intended to track the connections between public health and climate change. It emanated from the Lancet's scientific conclusion that climate change is the "biggest global health threat of the 21st century.”