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Medical Anthropology: Cross-

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Toward a Critical Anthropology

on the Impact of Global
Warming on Health and Human
Societies
a
Hans A. Baer
a
School of Social and Environmental Enquiry
and Centre of Health and Society, University of
Melbourne,

Available online: 11 Feb 2008

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Impact of Global Warming on Health and Human Societies, Medical Anthropology:
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 MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, 27(1):28
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DOI: 10.1080/01459740701831369

EDITORIAL
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Toward a Critical Anthropology

on the Impact of Global Warming
on Health and Human Societies
Hans A. Baer

This op-ed essay urges medical anthropologists to join a growing number of

public health scholars to examine the impact of global warming on health.
Adopting a critical medical anthropology perspective, I argue that global
warming is yet another manifestation of the contradictions of the capitalist
world system. Ultimately, an serious effort to mitigate the impact of global
warming not only on health but also settlement patterns and subsistence will
require the creation of a new global political economy based upon social
parity, democratic processes, and environmental sustainability.

Key Words: critical medical anthropology; global warming; health

Numerous climate scientists have come to the conclusion that global

warming or climate change is largely the result of human or anthropogenic
activities, particularly since the Industrial Revolution. Global average sur-
face temperatures rose 0.60.7C during the 20th century; depending on
the source, 2005 was either the hottest year or the second-hottest year since
temperatures began to be systematically recorded in the mid-19th century.
Forty percent of the Arctic icecap has retreated during the past several
decades; and glaciers around the world have been rapidly retreating. The

Hans A. Baer is at the School of Social and Environmental Enquiry and Centre of Health
and Society, University of Melbourne. Correspondence may be directed to him at School of
Social and Environmental Enquiry and Centre of Health and Society, University of Melbourne,
221 Bouverie Street, Carlton 3010 VIC, Australia. E-mail: hbaer@unimelb.edu.au

2
 THE IMPACT OF GLOBAL WARMING ON SOCIETIES 3

United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body

consisting of some 2,500 climate scientists around the world, projected in its
2007 report that the average global temperature would rise about 3C at the
present rate of greenhouse gas emissions, which continues to rise, by 2100.
In short, global warming will have severe economic, political, social, and
health consequences as the 21st century unfolds. Human societies have never
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faced an environmental problem on this scale before. Despite the grim

consequences emanating from global warming, anthropologists as well as
other social scientists have been slow in coming to grips with the impact that
global warming is presently having and will continue to have on humanity
for decades to come. John Bodley in his book Anthropology and Contempor-
ary Human Problems (2001:67) only refers in passing to global warming or
global climate change, despite the fact that he deals in great depth with the
global environmental crisis. Fortunately, an anthropology of global warm-
ing has begun to slowly emerge over the past several years, one that tends to
focus on adaptation of human societies to global warming but does not give
adequate attention to mitigation of global warming (Ray 2001, Nuttall et al.
2005). I am calling for the development of a critical anthropology, and more
specifically a critical medical anthropology, of global warming. Like a
few world systems theorists and critical environmental sociologists, this
endeavor recognizes that global warming is ultimately rooted in the capital-
ist treadmill of production and consumption (Baer 2007; Grimes and Ken-
tor 1997; Wallerstein 2007).
The sources of global warming are numerous and include a growing
global population clamoring for both basic and prestige resources, the grow-
ing proliferation of motor vehicles, a growing number of airplane flights
around the world, the overheating and overcooling of larger and larger
dwelling units (particularly in developed countries), deforestation, animal
production, and the production of a seemingly endless array of consumer
products that in part serve to alleviate the alienation of social life in the
modern world. In 2000, 59 percent of greenhouse gases came from CO2
emitted by fossil fuels; 18 percent from CO2 emitted from land-use altera-
tions (such as deforestation minus re-growth forests); 14 percent from meth-
ane emitted by biomass decomposition, coal mining, natural and oil systems
leakages, livestock production, wastewater treatment, cultivation of rice,
burning of savannah, and some from burning of fossil fuels; and 8 percent
from nitrous oxide released by agricultural soils (Pittock 2005:158159). The
United States, with 4 percent of the worlds population, produces about 25
percent of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions. Australia, which continues
to derive most of its energy from coal-fired electricity plants, continues to
increase its CO2 emissions by rates higher than the eight percent increase
granted to it, between 1990 and 20082012 under the Kyoto Protocol, which
 4 H. A. BAER

it, along with the United States, has not signed. Given that developing coun-
tries, such as China and India have embarked on raid upon rapid programs
of industrialization, and it can be expected that greenhouse gas emissions
from developing countries will eventually exceed those from the developed
world. Tragically, the least developed countries, particularly those in
sub-Saharan Africa, the South Pacific, the Maldives, and Bangladesh, have
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the most to lose from global warming because they have fewer resources
to adapt to it and their economies are more dependent on agriculture,
pastoralism, and fishing.
Global warming and related climate conditions portend to have serious
impacts on many of the peoples who anthropologists have historically
studied, including foragers, horticulturalists, pastoralists, peasants, and
more recently impoverished city dwellers. Small indigenous and peasant
communities in particular are finding themselves threatened by sea-level
rise, retreating glaciers, contraction of the Arctic icecap, and loss of water
supplies due to increased aridity or excessive precipitation, as well as
diminished food supplies as native species are lost because of global warm-
ing. The latter will have a drastic impact on dietary and nutritional patterns
and thus on health. South Pacific Islanders particularly face a threat to their
traditional horticultural lifestyle due to rising sea levels that inundate their
fields and water supplies and threaten to submerge their islands. The effects
of global warming, including the physical health and mental health effects
(such as the emotional consequences of forced relocation from drought or
flooded areas), will disproportionately impact poor nations and poor
persons within all nations.
The Inuit of arctic Canada and Alaska are experiencing a contraction of
polar bears that they have traditionally hunted and are unable to access
seals due to the fact that the icepack is freezing later than it once did.
Andean people face the possibility of the eradication of their way of life
as glaciers from which they have drawn water for themselves, their fields,
and their animals retreat. Peoples living in coastal areas around the world
face the possibility of increased flooding and hurricanes due to the rise of the
oceans and their warming. Many climate scientists contend that the
droughts that people in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Australia
have been experiencing are related to global warming.
Various scholars have recognized the impact of global warming on
health. Tony McMichael, the Director of the Centre of Epidemiology and
Population Health at Australian National University, has served as a
pioneer in the study of the impact of global warming on health and notes
that [t]his topic is likely to become a major theme in population health
research. His Planetary Overload discusses in detail the direct effects in
the form of heat stress and respiratory ailments, and the indirect effects in
 THE IMPACT OF GLOBAL WARMING ON SOCIETIES 5

terms of the spread of vector-borne and water-borne diseases of global

warming on human health (McMichael 1993). Paul R. Epstein (2002;
2005), a biomedical physician trained in tropical public health and the
Associate Director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment
at Harvard University, has also published extensively on the impact of
global warming on health. While in his medical anthropology textbook,
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Cecil Helman (2000:260) fleetingly alludes to global warming as one of a ser-

ies of anthropogenic-driven environmental forces impacting human health,
and medical anthropologists have given little attention to this topic. In our
recently released medical anthropology textbook, Merrill Singer and I
briefly discuss the impact of global warming on health in the chapter on
Health and the Environment (Singer and Baer 2007:189193).
At any rate, more frequent heat waves, particularly in urban areas, threa-
ten the health and lives of vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and
the sick. The estimated mortality of some 35,000 people during the heat
wave of summer 2003 were associated not only from the high temperatures
but also that fact that nighttime low temperatures have been rising nearly
twice as fast as daytime temperatures. The lingering nighttime warmth
deprived people of normal relief from blistering daytime temperatures and
the opportunity to recuperate from heat stress. Air pollution linked to
longer, warmer summers particularly affects those suffering from respir-
atory problems, such as asthma. Temperature rises also contribute to an
increase of ozone in the atmosphere. According to Epstein and Rogers,

Heat waves take a disproportionate toll on those living in poor housing

lacking air conditioning, and those with inadequate social supports. The
majority of those affected during the 1995 heat wave in Chicago, for example,
were AfricanAmericans living in substandard housing (2004:6).

Global warming has been implicated in the resurgence of numerous

epidemics, including malaria, cholera, dengue, and West Nile yellow fever,
to environments north and south of the equator and at higher elevations.
For example, higher temperatures in South Asia have caused elevated rainfall
levels and contributed to greater breeding opportunities for mosquitoes. While
global warming is not the only factor involved, it is estimated that there are
300500 million cases of malaria in Africa, resulting in between 1.52.7 million
deaths, more than 90 percent among children under five years of age. In short,
global warming is reshaping disease patterns with notable consequences
around the globe. Global warming appears to have contributed to the
resurgence of various epidemics, including cholera in Latin America in 1991,
pneumonic plague in India in 1994, and the outbreak of Hantavirus in
the U.S. Southwest in 1994. Indeed, we can speak of the diseases of global
 6 H. A. BAER

warming. These include any tropical disease that spreads to new places and
peoples, but also includes failing nutrition and fresh water supplies because of
desertification of pastoral areas or flooding of agricultural areas. The UN
Food and Agriculture Organization has warned that in some 40 percent of
the poorest developing societies with some two billion people, global warming
may drastically increase the numbers of malnourished peoples.
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Anthropologists have long recognized that social systems, whether local,

regional, or global, do not last forever. Global capitalism has been around
for some 500 years but I believe that it has so many inherent contradictions
that it ultimately must be transcended if humanity and the planet is going to
survive in some reasonable fashion. These contradictions include the growing
gap between the rich and poor within nation-states and between nation-
states thanks to corporate globalization and ongoing conflicts in many parts
of the world. The latter can be related in part to various governments, led by
the United States but including the United Kingdom and Australia, which
are willing to do the bidding of global corporate interests. The treadmill of
production and consumption associated with the drive for profits contributes
not only to the depletion of natural resources but also to environmental
degradation, which includes the extinction of plant and animal species.
It is obvious that human societies will have to adapt to the reality of global
warming in a variety of ways, including technological fixes, reliance on renew-
able energy sources, less reliance on cars and airplanes for transportation,
improvement of mass transit systems, more efficient forms of heating and
cooling, the development of buildings and dwelling units that are more energy
efficient, the redesign of cities, simpler patterns of consumption, and health
facilities to deal with diseases of global warming. The environmental, political,
economic, and sociocultural crises associated with global warming requires
strategies that should also contribute to mitigation, a process that checks
and reverses the present build up of greenhouse gas emissions. While numer-
ous strategies, including carbon taxes, carbon trading, and carbon seques-
tration have been proposed as ways of mitigating global warming, the vast
majority are framed within the existing parameters of global capitalism.
Addressing global warming will ultimately require a drastic restructuring
of the existing global political economy into one that is committed to social
justice and environmental sustainability. Achieving such a world system will
not be easy, especially given the fate of earlier efforts to create equitable and
just social systems (e.g., the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of
China). As Emilio Moran, one of the few anthropologists serving on the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, observed:

Do we recognize that business-as-usual threatens the end of life as we know it?

Are we will to use the considerable mental capacity, and exercise our political
 THE IMPACT OF GLOBAL WARMING ON SOCIETIES 7

will, to ensure our survival and that of our children? Or are we so self-satisfied
in our material success that we cannot recognize overwhelming evidence when
we see it? (2006:21,23).

The creation of an alternative global social order will require a multifa-

ceted effort, drawing on expertise from many quarters, including main-
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stream political and economic institutions as well as progressive social

movements. Indeed, a distinct anti-global warming movement has begun
to crystallize over the past few years, one that has built on warnings about
the dangers of global warming emanating over the past two decades from
climate scientists, environmental groups, and indigenous groups in the
Arctic and South Pacific.
Ultimately, the effort to examine the impact of global warming
on humanity has to be an interdisciplinary effort, one that involves
collaboration among climate scientists, social scientists, public health
people, and other specialists. Anthropologists, including medical anthropol-
ogists, can contribute to a larger effort not only to mitigate the impact of
global warming on humanity but also to think about and struggle for an
alternative global system, one committed to meeting peoples basic needs,
social equity and justice, democracy, and environmental sustainability. As
part of this endeavor, it is imperative that anthropologists become politi-
cally engaged and work in solidarity with progressive movements that in
various often cumbersome and even contradictory ways are seeking to
create an alternative to the present global political economy. Indeed,
anthropologists can work in solidarity with indigenous organizations such
as the International Forum of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities
on Climate Change, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, and the Alliance of
Small Island States that have been challenging the limited actions of
developed countries in responding to global warming.

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Epstein, P. R.
2002 Climate Change and Infectious Disease: Stormy Weather Ahead. Epidemiology 13:
373375.
2005 Climate Change and Public Health. New England Journal of Medicine 353:
14331436.
 8 H. A. BAER

Epstein, P. R. and C. Rogers

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