Dr. Fin Craig — she’s sporting Marigold gloves — with other riders on the Ride for their Lives … [+]
Carlton Reid
“We know what the problems are,” said Dr. Mark Hayden. “We know what the solutions are; what’s missing is the will.”
Dr. Hayden, like many others, is hoping that the political leaders now arriving at COP26 in Glasgow will finally take meaningful steps to fix the climate crisis.
He was speaking from the saddle of his electric bike on day six of a group cycle ride from London to Glasgow. Riders — mostly children’s healthcare professionals — were strung out along the muddy country lanes of the Tyne Valley, near Corbridge, following a route plotted some months earlier by Dr. Hayden and other organizers of the Ride for Their Lives rolling demo.
“We’re healthcare professionals, we’re not climate scientists, but we know that [the climate crisis] is the greatest threat to our patients,” he stressed.
“And if we’re not protecting the planet, we’re not protecting our patients.”
Dr. Mark Hayden with Sara, one of the healthcare riders on the Ride for their Lives ride.
Carlton Reid
Dr. Hayden, a pediatric consultant at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), plays an active role in the hospital’s active and sustainable travel group—“we focus on how people get to work in any method other than the car”—and the idea for Ride for their Lives came from one of the group’s meetings.
More than seventy healthcare professionals joined the ride, 39 for the full 500 miles, others for a day. Alongside doctors, nurses, anesthetists, occupational therapists, electricians, sustainability officers, and other children’s hospital staff from several London hospitals, there were leaders such as GOSH CEO Matthew Shaw, British Medical Journal editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee, and Camilla Kingdon, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.
The ride was ostensibly about the harms caused by air pollution.
“But,” said Dr. Hayden, “I can’t honestly think of a way that you could reduce air pollution but make the climate crisis worse.”
Ride for their Lives riders on day two on the ride, from Oxford to Birmingham.
Dr. Mark Hayden
Earlier in the week, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health issued a climate change statement which, among other measures, advocates for the speedier phasing out of fossil fuels and for global leaders to make children and young people’s health central to all climate change policy decisions.
“We have five workstreams [on climate change],” Dr. Kingdon told me from the side of the road.
“We’ve got a workstream looking at the research in relation to impact of climate change on children; we’ve got another workstream looking at how we advocate for children and young people to raise awareness about the impact of pollution on children’s health.”
Dr. Kingdon commutes to work by bicycle and joined Ride for their Lives for the Newcastle to Carlisle leg.
“This ride has grabbed people’s imagination,” she said.
“It’s a good hard slog to Glasgow; you’re putting yourself out of your comfort zone. But we’re trying to get the message out that the children’s lives are impacted by poor air quality.”
The riders are carrying open letters to deliver to world leaders. The Healthy Climate Prescription letter, signed by organizations representing 45 million health professionals around the world, says: “The climate crisis is the single biggest health threat facing humanity,” stating that air pollution is at the top of the list of deadly impacts. The letter calls for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels.
The riders will also deliver a COP26 Special Report on Climate Change and Health from the World Health Organization. The document’s journey started with Dr. Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, WHO’s Head of Climate Change and Health, who cycled from Geneva to London. He handed the report to Dr. Fin Craig, a palliative care consultant at GOSH, who has been riding in the most leisurely of the Ride for their Lives groups. (It was raining; Dr. Craig was sporting Marigold’s rather than fancy cycling gloves, and she wanted me to know she cycles everywhere, “but I don’t cycle for fun; I cycle for transport.”)
GOSH CEO Matthew Shaw is a hardcore road cyclist.
“If you talk to NHS staff, nine out of 10 will be really into the whole climate change agenda,” he told me as we wheeled along fast.
“The green agenda is often seen as a bit of a weird and wacky thing, but looking at the climate crisis from a health perspective is now mainstream. I think people get it, especially when you’re monitoring pollution levels outside your hospital, which is way above what [the levels] should be.
He added: “I think our politicians need to be more ambitious: it’s not a choice of the economy or the environment anymore; it’s both.”
Shaw, a surgeon before he moved into management, practices what he preaches.
“We got rid of the [family] car about three or four years ago. I’ve got three kids: 15, 10 and eight. But we weren’t using the car so we decided it should go.”
Ride for their Lives riders will be cheered at a welcoming event at Glasgow’s Gartnavel Hospital at lunchtime on Sunday.
