Now imagine receiving a life threatening health diagnosis and not only ignoring it, but speeding up the underlying causes and drivers of what’s making you unwell in the first place? Or imagine subsiding a product with public money that everyone everywhere knows contributes to and worsens that life threatening health diagnosis? Can you imagine getting that diagnosis from 97 to 99% of the doctors on earth and hoping it just works itself out? Well you don’t need to imagine it, do you? We’re doing it - our society - be that the deniers, the stagnant political class, or just all of us as one inter-connected species.

202 years after the greenhouse cycle was first discovered, 170 years after its existence was categorically proven, the first warming scenarios presented 130 years ago, the knowledge of and momentum around understanding the science and impacts of a changing climate only increase. But like the addict committed to just one more hit, here we are - next time, next week, next year. Record emissions, 2025 as the third hottest year on record, the seventh of nine planetary boundary passed. The statistics are extensive and grim. On the show is someone who knows more about the scientific process than just about everybody else in this country and understands deeply the effects of a changing climate on our health - Doctor Nicholas Talley.

Nick Talley is a gastroenterologist who’s published more than 1,000 scientific papers over the course of his remarkable career, being part of the pioneering group of experts globally who have sought to understand the complex yet magical world of the human microbiome - our gut health. Nick’s not on the show to chat too much about gut health but is here to speak in his capacity as Chair of Doctors for the Environment Australia - the DEA.

For more than 20 years Nick has applied his masterly intellect to better understanding the science of climate change and its effects and risks to the human body and its health systems. Doctors and medical professionals played a critical role in dispelling the many deleterious risks of smoking, many forms of toxic and poisonous chemicals, and products like asbestos, and thousands of doctors here in Australia and around the world have turned their attention to carbon molecules and plastics. Through the medical fraternity - and their individual and collective commitment to doing no harm - a path of potential climate action may be more productive than many others. Taking lessons from other now banned or severely restricted products, perhaps doctors offer a salvation of irrefutable evidence in the battle against the fossil fuel lobby and their commitment to mis and disinformation about their product.

What struck me is the commonality between the human health system and our microbiome and that of the world of climate science, climate change and its myriad risks and impacts. A common sense, first principles perspective offers us as individuals and a society a clear path of action - three meals a day with plenty of fresh produce, movement and enough sleep to the act of restricting fossil fuel industry expansion and ultimately hospicing the industry, supporting the transition of affected communities and ending the subsidies they receive ASAP. Maybe it doesn’t need to be as complicated as it always seems to be?

Support comes from:

• Reposit Power - $500 off your installation
• Altiorem - 25% off your annual subscription with code FINDINGNATURE25

Send me a message

Thanks for listening. Follow Finding Nature on Instagram