Climate change and pharmacy

In my well-thumbed 1972 edition of The Doomsday Book by Taylor (1972), he cites both British physicist John Tyndall, who suggested in 1861 ‘that world temperatures depended on the amount of carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere’, and British climatologist Dr CEP Brooks, who observed in 1949 that ‘[s]ince the beginning of the twentieth-century glaciers have been wasting away rapidly or even catastrophically.’

However, despite these early and subsequent warnings, it is clear from what many describe as our present-day climate change emergency that little has been done to address the onset of climatic havoc. But to what extent has the world of pharmacy paid heed to and/or acted upon the bleak climatic landscape we now survey?

Noting that the NHS is committed to meeting the targets of the Climate Change Act 2008, which includes reducing its carbon footprint by 80% by 2050, Maughan et al (2016) considered the economic cost and carbon footprint associated with prescribing long-term flupentixol decanoate long-acting injections. They found that a reduction of £300 000 could be achieved across England by improving prescribing behaviour, which equates to a saving of £250 per patient per year and 170 000 kg carbon dioxide equivalents. Psychiatrists, they concluded, ‘need to review their prescribing practice of long-acting injections to reduce their impact on the NHS financial budget and the environment.’