This is a guest post by Dan Bednarz and Paul Roth.

Recently, Energy Bulletin posted a summary of a UPI story that described a WHO (World Health Organization) study projecting global mortality and disease patterns in developing countries to the year 2030. The UPI story is titled “Analysis: Wealth Brings New Health Threats,” and concludes:

As the level of development worldwide increases, the greatest threats to health will shift from infectious diseases to non-communicable health problems like smoking-related illness, obesity and depression.

At first glance, this story illustrates how economic growth and associated consumerism create “diseases of affluence” (such as heart attacks, stroke, obesity and diabetes). As these illnesses are already rampant in the Western world, their increasing prevalence supports the notion of a reduced marginal rate of return on health expenditure, once basic public health measures (such as sanitation, safe drinking water provision, and mass immunisation) are implemented.

But while this is a subject worthy of discussion in its own right, it is not what caught our eye about this study. Let us explain how peak oil and associated ecological crises are of the utmost importance to the future of global health.