Health Care Without Harm Launches Commitment to Tackle Climate Change

NEW YORK, N.Y. — Health Care Without Harm, sponsored by the Skoll Foundation, recently unveiled a commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative to reduce healthcare’s carbon footprint in order to protect public health from climate change.

Healthcare represents 8 percent of U.S. and 5 percent of European greenhouse gas emissions. The CGI commitment sets an ambitious target to mobilize 10,000 hospitals and health centers on every continent in a collective effort to reduce the health sector’s greenhouse gas emissions by 26 million metric tons annually by 2020. This is equivalent to taking 5.5 million cars off the road or installing 7,000 new wind turbines every year.

The CGI commitment builds on Health Care Without Harm’s 2020 Health Care Climate Challenge by setting ambitious targets. Participants in the 2020 Health Care Climate Challenge already include more than 30 major health systems representing 1,200 hospitals and health centers from around the world. Among them are Partners Health Care, Dignity Health and Kaiser Permanente in the United States, England’s National Health Service, as well as both public and private systems from countries as diverse as South Africa, South Korea, Germany, Sweden and Brazil.

Many of the healthcare systems are committing to reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions often by 30 or 40 percent. Some are moving toward carbon neutrality. Others are advocating for public policies that foster a transition away from fossil fuels and to clean, renewable energy.

For more on the 2020 Health Care Climate Challenge, visit www.greenhospitals.net.