The Government presents the observatory to address extreme temperatures: “The climate crisis is a public health crisis”

Although it was created in the throes of the last legislature, in a Council of Ministers in July of last year, it was not until this Thursday that the new Health and Climate Change Observatory was officially presented with the presence of two ministers and a vice president. of the Government of Spain.

Because one of the main characteristics of this new organization, which will be responsible, among other things, for updating the health prevention plan in the face of extreme temperatures, is transversality.

The Vice President of the Government and Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, and the Ministers of Health and Science, Mónica García and Diana Morant, participated in the presentation held at the headquarters of the Carlos III Health Institute in Madrid.

“The climate crisis is a public health crisis,” García and Morant stressed in the presentation of this organization, whose working groups have already begun to function and whose functions will also include updating the alert systems for extreme temperatures. to make them more precise.

Because, as Ribera has stressed, a “poorly given alert” or a lack of information “can result in loss of life in extreme cases.”

To update this alert map, the study led by Cristina Linares, from the Carlos III Health Institute, will be essential, in which the maximum daily temperatures are determined from which mortality increases in a statistically significant way.

Until now, a system was used in which these thresholds were determined by provinces.

But within each one there can be tremendous differences.

The study prepared by the Linares team, advanced by EL PAÍS at the beginning of this month, further refines the calculation of these maximum temperatures for the so-called regions (areas of territory within a province that are homogeneous in terms of the behavior of daily temperatures).

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“We need an observatory to protect people,” Ribera emphasized during “the launch” of this observatory this Thursday.

The creation of the entity at the end of the last legislature was promoted by Ecological Transition.

But, after the formation of the new Government, Minister Mónica García, from Sumar, also wanted to place this observatory as one of the pillars of the actions of her department.

“The ecological transition is also a public health policy,” García emphasized at the event.

Meanwhile, Ribera has highlighted the importance of “teamwork” to launch the organization.

“We need an observatory to protect people,” insisted the third vice president, who recalled that in the past there were already attempts to create a similar figure that failed.

García, at his side, recalled that the World Health Organization (WHO) considers climate change “the greatest threat to public health.”

And he has stated that “the ecological transition is also a public health policy,” because many of the policies to combat global warming, such as the installation of renewables, save lives.

For her part, the Minister of Science has vindicated the role of institutions such as the CSIC when it comes to x-raying climate change and its derivatives.

She has emphasized that, in the CSIC alone, there are 150 research groups generating knowledge about the climate crisis.

Among the issues they address are the havoc caused by episodes of extreme temperatures.

Morant has cited one of those studies in which it is warned that, if action is not taken against warming, heat waves will multiply by five in the second half of this century in Spain.

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