How Can Climate Affect Health?
Extreme weather can affect our physical and mental health (e.g. heat stroke, respiratory illness, injury and trauma from severe weather events). There were at least 35,000 excess deaths across Europe in summer 2026 due to the heatwaves.
Environmental degradation: Lack of safe water, risks of new air-born disease, crop failure leading to food shortage
Livelihood loss: rising food and fuel prices, supply chain disruption, pressure on health and care services, conflict or forced migration.
Active Travel
Active travel replaces some or all the length of car journeys with self propelled travel, such as cycling, scooting or walking. More use is made of buses and trains.
The benefits of integrating more walking and wheeling into our daily travel are significant; saving money, improving health and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution.
Why Does Diet Matter?
The map shows UK land use, use by area, fitted into a map of the UK, with the areas to the right showing the amount of overseas land used to provide the remaining food we eat.
We only grow about 50% of our food. Increasing the proportion of vegetables in our food would reduce the amount of land we need to feed us and help us to increase our self reliance and food security. This is important as all counrtries will see increasing strains on their food supply and imports will become more scarce and more expensive.
There is an added issue with intensive meat farming. The digestive processes of many red meat producing animals create methane emission which accelerates global warming.
Reducing our meat consumption, especially red meat, increases the land available to grow plants for food. This is more efficient land use, helps food security, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and is healthier for us!