Healthcare has long known that medical error causes death and harm. It’s been quantified and high performing organisations measure and investigate every death to minimise medical error as much as possible.
But how many people die due to our carbon emissions?
It’s hard to know for sure but modelling allows us to get an idea. Health care makes up 7% of Australia’s carbon footprint and this resulted in around 35 772 kilotonnes CO2 equivalent being emitted in 2014-15.
Modelling suggests that one person will prematurely die for every 1-4 kilotonnes of CO2 emitted , due to the diverse health effects of climate change (Bressler, Lancet 2021; Pearce, Energies 2023)
Based on this modelling it would suggest the Australian health care system’s carbon footprint will be responsible for an additional 9,000 – 35,000 deaths for each year of emissions at this level.
This surely eclipses the medical error risks and thus deserves the same or more amount of attention. Thankfully there are some movements in this direction including the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards including sustainability as an accreditation module. Now we know the vague amount of harm we are doing, we need to aggressively advocate for changes in public policy, health care systems and delivery to minimise this harm.