Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) added its signature to a call for governments to negotiate a legally binding treaty that would phase out fossil fuels, which are framed in the letter as “severe threats to human and planetary health.”
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared that fossil fuels are “environmental vandalism” and “[f]rom the health perspective … an act of self-sabotage.”
The letter cited the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) treaty as an example of how a proposed binding obligation on governments might work to reduce the effects of climate change. This would be all well and good if it were not for the fact that the methods employed by the FCTC Secretariat, if mirrored by a similar treaty on climate change, would all but obliterate less harmful fossil fuel options for the planet.
For example, the FCTC treaty specifically states that “harm reduction” – the reduction of the well-known harms of smoking by substituting safer alternatives – is one of the main pillars of global tobacco control. Yet, the WHO refuses to endorse any of the many safer nicotine alternatives to combustible tobacco. Dr Tedros recently claimed on Twitter that “[a]ll forms of nicotine, incl. vaping, are harmful to health” before going on to say that “it’s best to use proven cessation tools” which also contain nicotine.
Martin Cullip – Townhall – 2022-10-27.
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