Healing Hazard

Health Care Sector Impacts Climate

A new study by the international nonprofit Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), in collaboration with Arup, a British multinational professional services firm, claims that if the global health care sector were a country, it would be the fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter on the planet. It provides, for the first time, an estimate of health care’s global climate footprint. Josh Karliner, HCWH international director of program and strategy and report co-author, says, “The health sector needs to transition to clean, renewable energy and deploy other primary prevention strategies to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.”

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