Just before the United Nations convened COP 23 in Bonn, Germany – the 23rd Conference of Parties to discuss and reach agreement to take action to halt climate change – the American Public Health Association launched its annual conference on in Atlanta on Nov. 4. The theme of the five-day gathering this year was Climate Change and Health, which was attended by 12,000 public health professionals and students, mostly from the U.S. but also from 40 other nations.
The conference keynote speaker was Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation of Northern Alberta, Canada. She’s a leader in the Indigenous Environmental Network Canadian (Indigenous) Tar Sands Campaign, which is working to stop construction of four different pipelines that would carry tar sands, the dirtiest, most energy intensive oil on the planet from Alberta to the U.S., other parts of Canada and beyond.
Deranger talked about the terrible health and climate impacts on her people due to fossil fuel contamination and the move away from traditional hunting and trapping to consumption of processed foods. Health consequences include lower life expectancies, increased levels of obesity and diabetes linked to diet; respiratory diseases caused by climate change and the drivers of climate change and increased cancer rates. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus attended the APH conference where she recorded and produced this excerpt of Deranger’s talk.
Learn more about the campaign by visiting Canadian Tar Sands Resistance at ienearth.org/what-we-do/tar-sands and IEN-Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign on FaceBook at facebook.com/groups/215875949026/.
