Invited Editorial: Health as a crucial driver for climate policy

H ealth impacts of climate change and the need to prevent them should be at centre stage of the ongoing debate on climate policies (1). We have specifically prepared this series of papers to be available for the COP15 conference in Copenhagen, to which the world looks to agree on targets and procedures to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on the basis of fair burden-sharing between high and low-income countries. Fig. 1 illustrates how GHG emissions, health impacts and climate policies are linked through a cascade of causes and effects. It highlights, how evidence of health impacts (top right arrow) can and should influence the debate on mitigation and adaptation (bottom left arrow). There are three strong reasons for the climate policy community to consider health impacts: