Do Diabetics Cause Global Warming?

People with type 2 diabetes have been accused of increasing health care costs. Now we're accused of contributing to global warming!

The first meme is that people with type 2 diabetes brought it on themselves by eating junk food and becoming overweight, with the weight triggering diabetes in those with a genetic susceptibility. What many don't understand is that junk food, high in both carbohydrate and fat, is cheaper than healthy food. When you have hungry children, you'll feed them what you can afford, and you'll eat the same thing yourself. This explains the apparent paradox that low-income people are often fatter than the rich, who can afford meat and fresh vegetables and fruit.

Now comes this:

"Meanwhile, an increased prevalence of diabetes may lead to more carbon emissions being generated by the health care systems treating those patients. 'Diabetes-related complications -- such as (cardiovascular disease), stroke and renal failure -- cost lives and money. Hospitalizations from such complications are also energy-intensive and increase (greenhouse gas) emissions,' according to the report."

This is from an article on diabetes and climate change. The main point of the article is that hotter climates result in more cases of diabetes. This makes no sense to me, as the Inuit have very high diabetes rates when they adopt a Western diet. 

Also, the story involves correlation, not causation. One can find all kinds of correlations that are meaningless. My favorite is the correlation between cheese consumption and fatal bedsheet-tangling accidents, from Tyler Vigan's book "Spurious Correlations." As time passes, temperatures increase. All sorts of other things also increase, like exotic pizza varieties and emmigration to Canada. Do these cause diabetes?

The article on climate change also contradicts another recent article that claims that lounging in 104-degree water for an hour results in better blood glucose control.

Does having patients in a hospital use significantly more energy than having the beds stay empty? True, if a room was empty, they might turn off the lights. But how about all the energy used by commuters driving an hour or so twice a day? (Not to mention all the fuel burned to get Trump to his weekend golfing expeditions to Florida.)

How about all the energy used by people watching giant-screen TVs? Working out at a gym instead of going outside to exercise in the fresh air? Using leaf blowers instead of raking their leaves?

What percentage of all these types of energy use would type 2 patients with complications add?

This kind of sweeping generalization can cause harm. And in our current political climate, in which some think it's OK to pick on the sick and poor, it could result in making diabetes care even more difficult. 

We have to stop blaming patients and focus on early detection and treatment of disease for everyone so no one gets complications.