State of the World

Okay so this is pretty much just a venting rant. I was reading "Approaches to an ecological base for public health" (Kickbusch 1989), and it mentioned the reciprocal relationship between sustainability and health. That's important to me, because 1) I did a survey a few years ago about this topic, while I was doing concurrent Master's programs in public health and sustainability, and 2) I have been looking for a cohesive joining of PH & Sustainability using the ecological model for some time.

Anyway, that got me thinking (as I frequently do) about the direction that we are going in the world right now, both environmentally/ecologically and in our approach to health and disease. Of course, as i said, both are reciprocal and interdependent, but for some reason some people choose to ignore that obvious reality in favor of...being willfully ignorant, i suppose. (I don't know how else to explain it, which isn't true but that's not the point). Anyway, that made me think of the flooding in Pakistan right now, the (again, obvious) environmental causes of the flooding, and the human health impacts.



Aside from the immediately realized health concerns of water-borne disease (cholera, hep A, typhoid, leptospirosis, etc...), what jumps to my mind are the social unrest, upheaval and violence that will result from dwindling food, water and medical supplies. There are reports of this already. It brings to my mind "Environment, Scarcity and Violence" by Thomas Homer-Dixon, and the rest of the work that he has done in this area. I have not yet heard his name in any contemporary news outlet about any topic, but i have a feeling that is going to change very quickly in the coming years.