Australia needs to develop policies and structures to prepare for the health impacts of climate change because we have not moved quickly enough – domestically or internationally – to reduce emissions and mitigate the risk, Labor’s health spokesman, Chris Bowen , believes. Bowen will use a lecture at Sydney University on Wednesday night to argue a health response to climate change would not be necessary if there was a robust international policy response to emissions. “But the world, and Australia, has failed to act with appropriate seriousness and haste, and so we will need specific policies to deal with the health impacts of climate change,” he will say. A copy of the lecture shows Bowen will point to estimates that by 2030, 250,000 people around the world will die each year as a direct result of a warming planet. But what was often missing from the public debate in […]