Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and the Health of the Human Species

The human species faces a new threat to its health – perhaps to its survival.

Our burgeoning numbers, technology and consumption are overloading Earth’s capacity to absorb, replenish and repair.

These global environmental problems pose health risks, not just from localised pollution, but from damaged life-support systems. Might we, too, become an ‘endangered species’?

The risks of skin cancer and cataracts from ozone destruction are evident enough; likewise the health hazards from greenhouse-related heatwaves and hurricanes. More insidious, though, may be the indirect health consequences of climate change on food production and the spread of infections; likewise, immune suppression by ultraviolet radiation, erosion of overworked soils, depletion of freshwater, and loss of genetic and biological resources for producing food and medicines. Rapid urban growth poses other health hazards. Population health cannot be sustained without intact ecosystems.

Professor McMichael assesses these problems, and their scientific uncertainties, within a broad biological, historical and social context. Relations between the world’s rich and poor, and their environmental consequences, are explored. Above all, the health of Homo sapiens is examined within an ecological framework.