Climate Change and Health in Canada

Ford, Lea Berrang

National governments from around the world met in Poznan, Poland in December 2008 at the 14th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1). This conference came at a time of increasing political and scientific confidence in the role of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions in changing global temperatures. The most recent (2007) report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2) states that climate change is now "unequivocal", based on increasing evidence from global average air and ocean temperatures, melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level" (2) . While there remains uncertainty regarding the specific nature and rate of climatic changes and their impacts, there is negligible scientific doubt that the global climate is changing and that these changes will have significant and potentially profound impacts on a wide range of ecological and human systems across the planet (3) (4) (5) (6) .