Climate Change: The Lessons We Can Take into Dentistry

It is well established that human behaviour has affected the climate. Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal. What does all this have to do with dentistry?

Nathanial Rich (New York Times August 2018) wrote a fascinating article. He started with a prologue of which parts are shared below: 

“The world has warmed more than one degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution.”

The Paris climate agreement — the nonbinding, unenforceable and already unheeded treaty signed on Earth Day in 2016 — hoped to restrict warming to two degrees. The odds of succeeding, according to a recent study based on current emissions trends, are one in 20. If by some miracle we are able to limit warming to two degrees, we will only have to negotiate the extinction of the world’s tropical reefs, sea-level rise of several meters and the abandonment of the Persian Gulf.

The climate scientist James Hansen has called two degree warming “a prescription for long- term disaster.” Long-term disaster is now the best-case scenario. Three degree warming is a prescription for short-term disaster: forests in the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities. Robert Watson, a former director of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has argued that three-degree warming is the realistic minimum. Four degrees: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; Polynesia swallowed by the sea; the Colorado River thinned to a trickle; the American Southwest largely uninhabitable. The prospect of a five-degree warming has prompted some of the world’s leading climate scientists to warn of the end of human civilisation.

Is it a comfort or a curse, the knowledge that we could have avoided all this? because in the decade that ran from 1979 to 1989, we had an excellent opportunity to solve the climate crisis. The world’s major powers came within several signatures of endorsing a binding, global framework to reduce carbon emissions — far closer than we have come since. During those years, the conditions for success could not have been more favourable. The obstacles we blame for our current inaction had yet to emerge. Almost nothing stood in our way – nothing except ourselves.

Why didn’t we act? A common boogeyman today is the fossil-fuel industry, which in recent decades has committed to playing the role of villain with comic-book bravado. An entire subfield of climate literature has chronicled the machinations of industry lobbyists, the corruption of scientists and the propaganda campaigns that even now continue to debase the political debate, long after the largest oil-and-gas companies have abandoned the dumb show of denialism. But the coordinated efforts to bewilder the public did not begin in earnest until the end of 1989. During the preceding decade, some of the largest oil companies, including Exxon and Shell, made good-faith efforts to understand the scope of the crisis and grapple with possible solutions”.

The graph highlights the change in CO2 levels through millennia (www.climate.nasa.gov). 

What is Happening in Dentistry?

In dentistry we have seen an explosion for fast and quick dental solutions: aligner treatments, align and bleach, bleach and bond and full mouth veneers... is this ‘tik-tok’ trend a tipping point; are we at the stage where global climate change was between 1979-1989?

Many of these fast, short term solutions will not stand the test of time and will also start the restorative cycle with impending future doom. Should we act now to prevent a future ofdentistry ridden with re-treatments?

Are re-treatments the analogy for rising CO2 levels?

My team and I have seen many second opinions, and many of these cases have had previous orthodontic treatments. It can be a hard pill to swallow for the patient if they are told that we would need to put braces back on. The psychological reasoning is complex for many patients, and this makes for difficult conversations and a possible complex re-treatment where roots are already foreshortened, teeth previously extracted, tooth wear, multiple recessions, TMJ signs and symptoms.

Maybe as an industry we should act with more courage and with greater foresight to look out for the next generation of dental professionals, so they do not have to endure the climate change type scenario. Do we really want to ask the same question as Nathanial Rich did in his New York Times article: ‘Why didn’t we act?’

Paradoxical solutions in dentistry based on climate change

“Educate and Legislate leads to Change.”

• Greater mentoring from the experienced professionals. (EDUCATE)

• Greater ONLINE presence from experienced professionals. In the way of blogs and case studies (EDUCATE)

• Greater mass public awareness of dentistry and the procedures involved (A NETFLIX TYPE DOCUMENTARY). (EDUCATE)

• Develop a fundamental criterion of competencies of treatment. (LEGISLATION)

• Regulate the large companies such as aligner brands (LEGISLATION).