The Big Challenge: Climate and Health

Excerpt

The late and much loved Prof Tony McMichael, to whom the book Climate Change and Public Health is dedicated, tells us in Chapter 3 the story of an inebriated man searching for his lost car keys only in the illuminated region under a lamp post because, “that’s where the light is”. Prof McMichael then uses this story to warn that it is tempting for researchers to choose research priorities only under the figurative lamp post, that is, asking only those questions that are directly amenable to conventional research methods. He calls upon future researchers to “widen their horizons and their skills”, to “embrace new concepts and methods”, to “understand the dynamics of complex systems” and to “engage in genuinely interdisciplinary research”. This first-rate book edited by Barry S Levy and Jonathan A Patz indeed honours these sentiments and is a valuable resource for researchers, students and policy makers working in the field of climate change and health.

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