The Impact of Climate Change on Food Security

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Climate Change and Health

By: Lola Butcher

Pub. Date: November 29, 2019 Access Date: November 1, 2022

Source URL: https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre2019112900

https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre2019112900

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Overview

Background

Current Situation

Outlook

Pro/Con

Chronology

Short Features

Bibliography

The Next Step

Contacts

Footnotes

About the Author

Page 2 of 30 Climate Change and Health CQ Researcher

Introduction Scientists warn that a warming planet threatens human health. A United Nations agency estimates climate change will cause 250,000 additional deaths annually between 2030 and 2050. The threat is multifaceted. Prolonged droughts are causing malnutrition in Africa, while extreme heat is leading to spikes in heat stroke in places as diverse as Baltimore and Paris. Across the globe, changing climes are worsening allergies and increasing the deadly reach of illnesses such as malaria, dengue fever and West Nile virus. But consensus is lacking about what to do. Some experts argue the threat is exaggerated because people will adapt to the changing climate. Others say nations must quickly reduce carbon emissions to limit global warming and protect human health. Environmental activists are amplifying that message. One survey found that respondents ranked climate change as the top threat in 13 of 26 countries polled. In the United States, however, only 27 percent of Republicans — versus 83 percent of Democrats — view climate change as a major threat.

Karachi, Pakistan, was left under water after Cyclone Kyarr passed over the city on Oct. 28. Climatologists warn that the effects of a warming climate, including greater flooding from stronger cyclones and hurricanes, will increase the spread of water-borne diseases, endangering the health of millions of people. (Getty Images/Anadolu Agency/Sabir Mazhar)

Overview Shakira Franklin of Baltimore was driving to work on a scorching July day in 2018 when she started having trouble breathing. “Before I knew it, I was gasping for air,” said Franklin, who has asthma.

She was not alone. As Baltimore's temperature hovered near 100 degrees that day, emergency calls from people struggling with heat stroke, cardiac arrest and high blood pressure poured in. The same situation was playing out across a large swath of the world that summer, with more than 1,600 deaths associated with heat waves and wildfires in Europe, Japan and the United States.

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Protesters in Kyiv, Ukraine, in September demand action on climate change, which has been linked to human health problems. A 2018 survey found that people in 13 out of 26 countries polled ranked climate change as the top threat facing their nation. (Getty Images/LightRocket/SOPA Images/Pavlo Gonchar)

Deadly for some, these heat and extreme-weather events also are creating or worsening health issues for millions of people around the globe. And a growing number of experts say there is a connection between such weather events and changes in the climate. Scientists have linked climate change to, among other problems, allergies, premature births, stroke, kidney problems, malnutrition, mental health problems and the spread of malaria, dengue, Lyme disease and West Nile virus.

Until recently, climatologists and meteorologists were reluctant to attribute the severity of an individual weather event — a heat wave, an ice storm or a hurricane, for example — to climate change, says Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, a Washington-based organization working to mitigate climate change. But as scientific evidence has accumulated, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made that connection — and many experts agree that climate change's direct impact on human health is becoming clearer.

“People are now connecting the dots,” Benjamin says. “As the health effects of climate change to date have become more visible, the discussion is shifting from protecting polar bears to protecting people.”

Members of the public who might have lacked a sense of urgency about addressing climate change when they viewed it solely as an environmental threat are becoming more engaged now that they see it as a threat to their health, Benjamin says. Climate activists say governments must do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with fossil fuels, but beyond that, consensus is lacking about how to protect people's health.

The health threats associated with climate change — and their severity — differ from one location to the next. The World Health Organization (WHO), the U.N.'s public health agency, summarizes the global risk in stark terms: “A changing, more variable climate … presents a clear and present danger to health security.”

An estimated 157 million more people in every region of the world were exposed to extreme heat in 2017 than in 2000, according to the Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change, an interdisciplinary research collaboration among 27 leading academic institutions, the United Nations and intergovernmental agencies. Experts say Europe and the eastern Mediterranean appear more vulnerable to heat than Africa and Southeast Asia, probably because their populations are older and more urban.

Prolonged droughts in large areas of South America, Africa and Southeast Asia are causing malnutrition, stunting the growth of children and contributing to premature deaths. Floods, attributable to heavy rains and rising seas due to global warming, can be deadly and have longer-term effects, including the spread of infectious disease from unclean water and worsening of mental illness as flooding displaces victims, according to the Lancet Countdown.

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Mosquito-borne diseases, including Zika and dengue fever, are increasing in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Experts say warmer temperatures in temperate climates are enabling mosquitoes, which thrive in tropical regions, to migrate into other regions and to live for longer seasons each year. (AFP/Getty Images/Philippe Huguen)

The list goes on: Deaths from dengue fever — a mosquito-borne tropical disease — are increasing in Southeast Asia and the Americas because the warming climate allows mosquitoes to thrive in more parts of the world. Mortality rates for malignant melanoma, associated with exposure to the sun's ultraviolet radiation, have increased in Europe, the Americas and the western Pacific.

In 2017, the United States had 16 extreme-weather disasters — including hurricanes and wildfires — that killed nearly 3,300 people, according to a climate change review conducted for the American Public Health Association. Cases of Lyme disease, West Nile virus and other vector-borne illnesses transmitted by insects that have spread to the United States tripled between 2004 and 2016.

Making what it calls “a highly conservative estimate,” WHO said climate change globally will cause 250,000 additional deaths each year between 2030 and 2050. Of those, 38,000 will be elderly people exposed to heat, 48,000 will be victims of diarrhea and 60,000 will die from malaria and 95,000 from childhood undernutrition.

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But climatologist Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a public policy organization in Washington, disputes these forecasts, saying projecting the health effects of climate change is folly because people will adapt to changing conditions. He says his research shows that although heat killed hundreds of people in the Chicago area in 1995 and thousands in Paris in 2003 during heat waves, similar events in each city a few years later killed far fewer people. People had learned from experience, he says.

In the United States, heat warnings increased public awareness, cooling centers opened in large cities and health officials advised people to check on their elderly neighbors, Michaels says; in France, air conditioning became a priority.

“People decided that getting an air conditioner to plug into the window was maybe not such a bad idea for grandma's room,” says Michaels. “So there was both technological adaptation and social adaptation.”

Polling shows the public is increasingly concerned about climate change. A 2018 Pew Research Center survey found that climate change ranked as the top threat — higher than terrorism and other common worries — in 13 of 26 countries polled. Polling conducted in April by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, a university-affiliated research center in New Haven, Conn., found that 62 percent of Americans are at least “somewhat worried” about climate change; 38 percent think climate change already is harming Americans.

Mona Sarfaty, director of the Program for Climate and Health at George Mason University in Virginia, says the Yale survey, conducted twice a year, documents a rise in concern among the U.S. public. “We see a real shift, with people starting to feel that ‘Gee, people right near me may be impacted,’” she says.

But polling also shows a large partisan divide: Only 27 percent of Republicans consider climate change a major threat, while 83 percent of Democrats do, according to the 2018 Pew survey. President Trump, a Republican, once called climate change a hoax and continues to question the scientific consensus on global warming. When a 2018 study produced by 13 federal agencies and 300 leading climate scientists warned about the impact of climate change, Trump responded: “I don't believe it.” Younger Republicans, however, apparently diverge from their elders: A survey from Ipsos and Newsy found that some 77 percent of Republicans between 18 and 38 said climate change is a serious threat, slightly higher than Democrats in the same age group.

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People cool off near the Eiffel Tower in Paris during a June heat wave. With the number of extreme-heat events growing, public health officials say governments can help prevent heat-related deaths by opening cooling centers and encouraging people to check on elderly neighbors. (Getty Images/Anadolu Agency/Mustafa Yalcin)

After years of debate, representatives from 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015, pledging to take steps to hold the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. However, Trump announced in 2017 that the United States would withdraw from the agreement, calling it a “draconian” deal that would harm the U.S. economy and impose unfair environmental standards on American businesses and workers. On Nov. 4, Trump issued a formal notification of withdrawal, beginning a one-year process of U.S. departure from the accord.

The Lancet Countdown, established by the British medical journal The Lancet to monitor climate change, said many nations are failing to meet the Paris accord's goal: “A lack of progress in reducing emissions and building adaptive capacity threatens both human lives and the viability of the national health systems they depend on, with the potential to disrupt core public health infrastructure and overwhelm health services.”

The fossil fuel industry is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions; 20 oil, gas and coal companies have contributed more than one-third of all carbon dioxide and methane emissions worldwide since 1965, according to the Climate Accountability Institute, an independent research institute in Colorado.

But the American Petroleum Institute (API), a Washington-based organization that represents oil and gas companies, argues that the U.S. energy sector is doing its part to reduce emissions by becoming the world's largest supplier of natural gas, which generates about half the carbon emissions of coal when used to generate electricity. “As a cleaner-burning fuel, it is essential to climate progress,” Reid T. Porter, an institute spokesperson, said in an email.

Most industries could do more to address global warming, including the health care industry, which contributes nearly 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, says Jessica Wolff, U.S. director of climate and health for Health Care Without Harm, an international organization that seeks to reduce the environmental footprint of the health care sector. “Health care has a healing mission, but at the same time, its operations are significantly contributing to climate change and the very diseases they are trying to treat,” she says.

A group of 19 U.S. health systems that represent about 10 percent of the nation's hospitals have joined Health Care Without Harm's climate council, committing to reduce their carbon emissions and help their communities become more resilient to climate change. Internationally, about 18,000 hospitals and health systems have signed on to Health Care Without Harm's global climate challenge, promising to be leaders in tackling the climate crisis.

“The health care sector has both the opportunity and the obligation to use its ethical, economic and political influence to work on climate change,” Wolff says.

As doctors, scientists, politicians and others consider climate change's impact on health, here are some of the questions they are asking:

Will climate change set off a global health catastrophe?

When David Attenborough, a longtime British broadcaster known for his natural-history documentaries, was invited to speak at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland, in December 2018, he did not mince words. “If we don't take action,” he warned, “the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.”

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His fellow Briton, Rupert Read, a spokesperson for the Extinction Rebellion, a global organization pushing for climate action, disagrees with that time frame. “Dangerous climate change is already causing a health catastrophe in parts of the world,” says Read, a philosophy professor at the University of East Anglia.

Both are correct, according to the WHO. It has compiled a list of catastrophes that have occurred in recent decades, such as a 2003 heat wave that killed more than 70,000 across Europe. In Ethiopia, droughts have caused famines along with high levels of child undernutrition since the 1980s. In 2010 alone, 6 million people in Pakistan needed urgent medical care from floods, which had destroyed more than 200 health care facilities.

The WHO projects an even higher level of catastrophe in coming years, including increasing incidences of respiratory and cardiovascular disease; injuries and deaths from extreme-weather events; the spread of infectious diseases; and food and water shortages stemming from ecological changes caused by global warming.

Worried about rising sea levels, the leaders of small, island nations asked the United Nations to take a new look at the consequences of climate change. In late 2018, scientists convened by the world body said that without immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increased coastal flooding may displace millions by 2040.

The IPCC, a group of more than 100 scientists from 36 countries, reported that some 50 million people living in the United States, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam will be affected by increased coastal flooding if the atmosphere warms by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels — and such warming could happen by 2040.

Previously, the scientists had focused on the damage resulting from an average temperature increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celcius), the threshold that had been considered to trigger the most severe effects of climate change. The IPCC's report says that if that threshold were reached, a “rapid evacuation” will occur in the tropics.

“In some parts of the world, national borders will become irrelevant,” said Aromar Revi, director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, an education institute that focuses on urbanization, and an author of the report. “You can set up a wall to try to contain 10,000 and 20,000 and 1 million people, but not 10 million.”

Michaels, at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, says it is wrong to focus on the IPCC's worst-case scenario. The IPCC analysis gives “multiple lines of evidence” to expect the scope and pace of global warming will be less worrisome than the most dire scenario depicted, he says. “Yes, global warming is real and people have something to do with it,” says Michaels, a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists. “But the magnitude of the warming that we are going to see is going to be at the low end of the projected range.”

Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., a member of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, agrees. Climate change “is something that needs to be addressed, but it certainly isn't a ‘doomsday’ scenario,” he said in an email. “The climate is changing, but it's been changing since day one. Instead of forecasting doom, we need to be working on innovation, mitigation and adaptation to actually address the issue.”

Michaels points to hydraulic fracking — the process of extracting oil and gas from subterranean rock by injecting liquid under high pressure to create fractures — as an example of how technological innovation can address climate change in unforeseen ways. Less than two decades ago, the consensus that the United States had depleted its natural gas deposits was upended when fracking technology improved. For the past decade, the nation has been the world's leading producer of natural gas, which emits less carbon dioxide than coal when burned in power plants.

“Imagine if we had passed a law in some fit of hyper-environmentalism, saying, ‘There shall be no more exploration for new sources of fossil fuels,’” he says. “What would we have forgone as a result of that? A lot.”

Representing people who live on Georgia's coastline, Carter advocates mitigation measures such as using federal grants to elevate houses in flood-prone areas. “We need to be focused on things like ensuring homes, bridges and roadways are in positions where they won't be flooded,” he says.

Wolff, at Health Care Without Harm, agrees that planning can mitigate some health effects of climate change. “We have to do some adaptation and become resilient to the changes that are going to happen because the atmosphere has already warmed,” she says.

For example, after a 2010 heat wave killed more than 1,300 people in Ahmedabad, India, leaders developed a heat action plan that included training health care staff, distributing water and painting roofs with white reflective paint to reduce the heat in homes. When a similar heat wave hit in 2015, fewer than 20 people died.

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But adaptation strategies will not undo the climate change that has already been put in motion by carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere, Read, the Extinction Rebellion spokesperson, says. The only hope is for an immediate and dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

“So things are bound to get worse for a long time to come on a human scale whatever we do,” he says. “And if we don't rise up to the kind of challenge that people like [teen activist] Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion are laying down now, then things will get worse basically forever.”

Should doctors take responsibility for educating the public about the health effects of climate change?

When her patient — a 64-year-old with asthma that worsens during allergy season — asked why her eyes and nose were running for longer periods every year, Dr. Mary Rice, a pulmonologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, had the answer ready.

“Because of global warming, the plants are flowering earlier in the spring,” she said. “After hot summers, the trees are releasing more pollen the following season. And the ragweed — it's extending longer into the fall.”

For that reason, Rice said, her patient may need stronger medicines, more air filters in her home and more days wearing a mask.

The Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health at George Mason University — composed of the American College of Physicians and other medical societies — seeks to encourage doctors to educate themselves and others about climate change. In 2014, Sarfaty, its director, surveyed three groups of U.S. doctors — allergists, pulmonologists and physicians who belong to the National Medical Association, which represents African American doctors — to ask if they treated patients whose health was affected by climate change. “About 70 percent said that they did — and 50 percent said patients' health was impacted to a ‘great’ or ‘moderate’ extent,” she says.

But attempts by health officials and scientists in recent years to sound the alarm about the health effects of climate change have not always resonated with the public.

Patients need to hear from their own physicians, says Molly Rauch, public health director for Moms Clean Air Force, a New York City-based coalition of more than 1 million parents working to promote healthy air.

“We need to be hearing these messages from the people to whom we entrust our health and our children's health,” Rauch says. “We need to get information from the people who are already talking to us about smoking and bike helmets. That's going to be much more powerful than experts releasing a report or health officials issuing a brochure.”

The 2018 Lancet Countdown brief for the United States agrees. “Given that the bedrock of public health is education about threats to health, it is critical that health providers inform their patients, communities, and policy makers about the health harms of climate change,” the report said.

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Its authors pointed to research showing that primary care providers are among the most trusted voices to deliver a message about the health effects of climate change, outranking family and friends, government agencies and climate scientists.

Some physicians are on board, and organizations such as Florida Clinicians for Climate Action are emerging to encourage them. That group, formed in 2018, urges physicians and nurses to educate the public and policymakers about the health effects of climate change in Florida and the United States, and one goal is to “move public opinion.”

Such education is appropriate only if the context is right, says Dr. Aaron Bernstein, co-director of the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University, who also is a pediatrician at Boston Children's Hospital. “Our first obligation as [health care] providers is to meet people where they're at,” he says. “Our job is not to convince them that climate change is happening, and our job is not to use people's illnesses as a means to educate them on climate change or any other potential topics.”

Through the center, Bernstein works to address the causes of climate change with the goal of improving the health of children around the world. If he's caring for a child hospitalized for, say, an infection unrelated to climate, he does not proselytize. “But if someone is asking, and it matters to their understanding of what they are going through, then yes,” Bernstein says. “And it does come up.”

Sarfaty says some physicians — particularly those who treat children, patients with lung problems and older people — find that discussing climate change is essential to helping patients cope with specific medical conditions.

“But I would say that most physicians feel that there's no time,” she says.

Physicians responding to a consortium survey in 2016 identified lack of time and lack of payment as obstacles to discussing climate change with their patients, Sarfaty says. Those two issues are related; insurers require that physicians do several specific things to get paid for an office visit, and discussing climate change is not on the list.

Rauch says environmental activists disagree on what climate change messages physicians should be giving to their patients. Some want health professionals to encourage their patients to call lawmakers and become activists, but she has a different view.

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As the mother of three children, Rauch says she wants her pediatrician to provide action items relative to a specific health threat. Not all parents or patients know, for example, that they need to pay attention to heat advisories, drink a lot of water and keep kids indoors during a heat wave.

“And, as he's talking to me about this, I want him to say, ‘You know, we're going to be seeing more and more of these because of climate change. And climate change is something that is caused by the pollution that people are creating. And until that pollution is prevented, we need to be very aware of these health impacts,” Rauch says.

Is climate change causing or worsening mental health problems?

In a comparison of 67 developed nations, Australia ranks as one of the most vulnerable to global warming because of its struggles with stronger storms, rising seas and growing frequency of brush fires, according to a report by the global bank HSBC. Sarah Udin, an Australian in her 20s, suffers from knowing that. “Sometimes I wake up from nightmares of the dystopian future that's becoming more of a reality for our children,” she said.

She is not alone. Researchers for the Lancet Countdown said both gradual climate change and extreme-weather events take a toll on mental health. Heat is the single biggest culprit. “Because of their rapidly growing frequency, duration and intensity, heat waves are of particular concern, with strong evidence linking their occurrence to increases in population distress, hospital psychiatric admissions and suicides,” The Lancet report said.

Certain groups — the elderly, pregnant women, people with pre-existing mental illness, the economically disadvantaged and tribal and indigenous communities — are most vulnerable to the mental health effects of climate change, according to the most recent U.S. national climate assessment, a periodic report to Congress and the president. People living in a household that experienced a flood are more likely to experience depression and anxiety, even years after the event, than those who did not, and high temperatures are associated with an increase in aggressive behaviors, including homicide.

The problem is particularly worrisome for mental health professionals working in communities that historically have had a high prevalence of depression, such as those above the Arctic Circle. A recent survey found that 76 percent of Greenland's residents said they had personally experienced the effects of global warming in their daily lives. Some, for example, reported that because of shorter winters and growing economic troubles they had to euthanize their sled dogs; others fear traveling on thinning ice.

“There is no question, Arctic people are now showing symptoms of anxiety, ‘ecological grief’ and even post-traumatic stress related to the effects of climate change,” said Dr. Courtney Howard, board president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. “Many of these islanders are in mourning for a disappearing way of life.”

Jerry Norton lives in Kivalina, Alaska, an island village more than 80 miles above the Arctic Circle that is threatened by sea level rise due to melting ice. Dr. Courtney Howard said indigenous Arctic peoples are showing symptoms of anxiety and “ecological grief” because of climate change. (Getty Images/Joe Raedle)

The psychiatric profession has no validated methods to screen individuals for mental health issues associated with climate change, so the prevalence of the problem is unknown, says Dr. Carissa Cabán-Alemán, a psychiatrist at Florida International University and a member of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance. She says more people will seek treatment as they become aware that mental health professionals have tools to help. Psychological first aid — a technique developed in the field of disaster psychiatry — might be used in some situations; medications, psychotherapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction also might be appropriate, she says.

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In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017, Cabán-Alemán has worked with CrearConSalud, a nonprofit organization composed of Puerto Rican psychiatrists practicing in the U.S. mainland, to help disaster victims. Her primary technique is to promote “transformational resilience,” a proactive response to the anxiety caused by climate change.

“We are giving the tools to people to empower themselves, to seek out the resources that they need for themselves and to demand the governmental resources that they need to confront climate change adequately and to mitigate the effects it is having,” she says.

Extreme anxiety and depression about climate change is rational and can even be helpful, according to Extinction Rebellion's Read. “More and more people are going to be stricken with eco-anxiety, which is simply a terror about the future, horror at what we've done and grief over what we've destroyed and lost,” he says. “But these people, among whom I include myself, are actually the lucky ones because we are ahead of the curve.”

Thunberg, a Swedish teenager, has said global warming was one cause of the depression she experienced before she became one of the world's most visible activists for governmental action against climate change.

The American Psychological Association agrees that the changing environment is a legitimate source of distress that threatens society's ability to deal with the problem at hand. “To compound the issue, the psychological responses to climate change, such as conflict avoidance, fatalism, fear, helplessness and resignation are growing,” the association said. “These responses are keeping us, and our nation, from properly addressing the core causes of and solutions for our changing climate, and from building and supporting psychological resiliency.”

But eco-anxiety is not a bad thing if, instead of paralyzing its victims, it motivates them to take action, said David Austern, a clinical psychologist at NYU Langone Health in New York City. “Is it more pathological for someone to be so worried about climate change or is it actually more pathological that people are not more worried about it?'” he asked.

Background Warming in the Dark

The idea that gases in the Earth's atmosphere trap heat from the sun, keeping the planet warm, was first theorized by French physicist Joseph Fourier in 1824.

In 1904, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius concluded that human use of fossil fuels was causing carbon dioxide to build up in the atmosphere and increasing the Earth's temperature — a positive development, in his view, because he thought warmer climes would increase crop production and make some regions more habitable.

The connection between higher concentrations of carbon dioxide and global warming was confirmed by British engineer Guy S. Callendar when he calculated that the mean global temperature had risen close to 0.3 degrees Celsius (0.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over the previous 50 years. In 1938, he concluded that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, which had increased by about 10 percent since 1900, were the cause.

In the 1950s, scientists began measuring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in ocean surface waters. Using an instrument atop the volcanic Mauna Loa peak in Hawaii, American scientist Charles Keeling was able to measure carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere far away from human sources of the gas.

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People gather in New York City on April 22, 1970, during the first Earth Day. The 1970s saw a growing public awareness of the damaging effects of climate change. (Getty Images/Hulton Archive)

Writing in Scientific American in 1959, physicist Gilbert Plass predicted that global temperatures would rise by perhaps 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.7 degrees Celsius) by the end of the century. The magazine's editorial staff, aware of the public's growing concern about pollution, illustrated the article with a photograph of industrial coal smoke captioned, “Man upsets the balance of natural processes by adding billions of tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year.”

In 1963, a few months after her book, Silent Spring, about the environmental harms of pesticides became a bestseller, Rachel Carson warned a congressional subcommittee about the dangers of pollution. “Our heedless and destructive acts enter into the vast cycles of the Earth and in time return to bring hazard to ourselves,” she said.

The public's concern about environmental degradation was behind the first Earth Day, held in 1970. After the Massachusetts Institute of Technology asked about 40 scientists to consider environmental issues, they reported the rise of carbon dioxide and the associated risk of global warming was “so serious that much more must be learned about future trends of climate change.”

Not all scientists believed the planet was warming. In 1974, the U.S. government reported a growing consensus among leading climatologists that the world was undergoing a cooling trend that might affect global food supplies. A report produced for the CIA that year cited an increase in Arctic ice and a shortened English growing season since the 1940s. British climatologist Hubert Lamb said 22 of 27 forecasting methods he reviewed predicted a cooling trend through the rest of the 20th century.

This view proved to be short-lived. In 1981, NASA predicted global warming of “almost unprecedented magnitude” in the coming decades.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 1990 that the danger of greenhouse gases was real, human activity contributed to climate change and both global temperatures and sea levels will continue to rise.

Initially, climate change was not a partisan issue in the United States. A Gallup Poll in 1997 found almost identical proportions of Democrats and Republicans — 46 percent of the former and 47 percent of the latter — said “the effects of global warming have already begun.” A decade later, only 41 percent of Republicans held that view, while 76 percent of Democrats agreed with the statement.

Health Connection Emerges

The European heat wave of 2003 caught people off guard. Temperatures topped 100 degrees for a full week, imperiling low-income residents living in old apartment buildings without air conditioning. People did not realize they needed to check on their elderly neighbors, and public health officials did not recognize the need for cooling centers to provide water and air conditioning. Nearly 12,000 people died in Paris alone.

Vacationers on an Alaskan cruise in 2004 became ill after eating local shellfish, and the culprit was identified as Vibrio parahaemolyticus, a bacterium whose natural habitat is coastal ocean waters in warm climates. Rising ocean temperatures allowed the pathogens carrying subtropical diseases to spread northward.

Hurricane Katrina — a Category 5 storm — struck New Orleans in 2005, causing catastrophic damage to the city, which did not have the appropriate infrastructure and evacuation plan in place to limit the devastation. A survey of affected residents a month after the hurricane found that 49.1 percent of respondents were experiencing anxiety-related mood disorders. A longer-term evaluation of the mental health impact on Katrina victims said the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder and attempts at self-harm and suicide increased over time.

An aerial view of New Orleans' 9th Ward in September 2005 shows flooding

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from Hurricane Katrina. In addition to causing some 1,200 deaths, according to a federal government estimate, the catastrophic storm, which scientists say intensified due to warmer water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, left deep emotional scars on city residents. (AFP/Getty Images/Robyn Beck)

An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary about former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate the public about global warming, was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006; it became an international box office success and won two Academy Awards. In 2007, Gore and the IPCC were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to recognize “their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change.”

In late 2007, the Yale Program on Climate Change conducted the first-ever in-depth study of the public's perceptions of risks associated with climate change by surveying New York City residents. A large majority said they were convinced that global warming was happening and was caused mainly by human activities. Sixty percent said they worried either a great deal or a fair amount about global warming, but most respondents said they believed that global warming was a greater threat to species, people and places relatively far away.

Public views changed relatively little over the next six years: A national survey in November 2013 found that 63 percent believed global warming was happening, but 23 percent disagreed — up 7 percentage points from April of that year. Although most Americans believed climate change would harm future generations of people, plants and other animal species, only 38 percent said they personally would be harmed “a moderate amount” or a “great deal” by global warming.

Calls for Action

Humankind's impact on the Earth has been on the international agenda since 1972, when the U.N. Conference on Human Environment convened in Stockholm. The World Commission on Environment and Development, established in 1983, concluded that the future of humanity was at risk if growth and development continued at an unsustainable rate.

In June 1992, some 20,000 people, including more than 100 heads of states, gathered in Brazil for the Earth Summit to debate solutions to environmental threats, including climate change.

The Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement setting emission reduction targets, was adopted in 1997 and went into effect in 2005. Initially, 37 industrialized countries and the European Community agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. Subsequently, a different group of countries committed to reduce emissions by at least 18 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Although 191 nations and the European Union have ratified the protocol, the United States never did and dropped out of the process in 2001.

Leaders from nearly 200 countries who gathered at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2015 signed the Paris Agreement, the first climate agreement to win broad global support. Its targets: limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius and pursue efforts to keep warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. WHO leaders have called the pact “potentially the strongest health agreement of this century.”

The next year, more than 100 experts representing eight U.S. federal agencies reviewed a scientific assessment of climate change as part of the President's Climate Action Plan and issued a report warning that “climate change threatens human health and well-being in the United States.”

The report documented how certain groups — children, the elderly, individuals with pre-existing health conditions and those with low socioeconomic status — are the most vulnerable to health effects attributed to climate change. Further, the scientists identified a wide range of conditions — Alzheimer's, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, mental illness, obesity and disability — that are worsened by the effects of climate change.

At its annual meeting in Taiwan in 2016, the World Medical Association, a confederation of 114 national medical societies, adopted a policy statement calling on its members to educate health scientists, businesses and governments about the health benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The association urged health organizations to replace their investments in energy companies that rely on fossil fuels with investments in enterprises that generate energy from renewable sources.

In June 2017, President Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Agreement because he said its economic costs were too high. Two months later, he rolled back standards that required the federal government to account for climate change and sea level rise when building infrastructure.

Meanwhile, physician groups in 2017 created the U.S. Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health to inform the American public and policymakers about the health harms of climate change and the health benefits of climate solutions. They were following the lead of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, a coalition of British medical and nursing colleges and health institutions that has a similar mission.

Also in 2017, two research groups — one at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the other an international coalition of scientists known as World Weather Attribution — said climate change was likely a factor in the devastating rainfall of Houston's Hurricane Harvey earlier that year. Harvey was a Category 4 storm that caused catastrophic flooding.

In conjunction with international talks to advance the Paris Agreement, Health Care Without Harm recruited 129 institutions in 31 countries to sign a call to action for the health sector to play a leadership role in tackling climate change. The document urged hospitals, drugmakers and other health care stakeholders around the world to reduce their carbon footprint, build greater health system resiliency and step up as leaders to protect “public and planetary health from climate change.”

Scientists' messages about the health effects of climate change grew more urgent in 2018, when the U.S. Global Change Research Program, consisting of 13 federal agencies that conduct or use climate change research, issued a report. Its key messages:

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Climate change is already affecting Americans' health and well-being, and the adverse consequences will worsen with additional climate change.

Exposure and resilience vary across populations, with children, communities of color, low-income communities and older adults the most vulnerable.

Proactive adaptation policies and programs reduce the risks and effects from climate-sensitive health outcomes and disruptions in health care services.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions directly saves lives and produces economic benefits.

Trump said he did not believe the report's finding, which included the warning that the U.S. economy will suffer substantially from global warming. His administration is proposing changes to the way projections are made in reports, prompting Philip B. Duffy, the president of the Woods Hole Research Center, a think tank that studies climate change, to decry “a pretty blatant attempt to politicize the science.”

In response to Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, 17 state governors belonging to the U.S. Climate Alliance announced initiatives in 2018 to cut carbon pollution by more than 26 percent by 2025, fulfilling their share of the U.S. commitment to the accord. In addition to capping emissions from vehicles and power plants, the states seek to change the way power is bought and sold. The governors' goal is to create incentives for clean energy projects and reduce the most dangerous greenhouse gases.

In October 2018, the IPCC reported that the short-term consequences of climate change were more dire than believed. If greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, it said, the atmosphere will warm by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels by 2040, intensifying flooding, droughts and poverty.

Current Situation United Nations and WHO

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Sept. 25 released a report saying that it is too late to stop at least some sea level rise from occurring because of global warming.

Rapidly melting glaciers and ice sheets will, by 2050, make floods that used to occur once a century become annual events in low-lying coastal areas that are home to as many as 680 million people, the report said.

The health effects include a major loss of food production as ocean warming reduces the habitats for fish, an important dietary staple for many people in the tropics. Speaking at a U.N. Climate Action Summit in late September, Lionel Aingimea, president of the tiny country of Nauru, said the loss of the tuna fishery will mean “economic Armageddon” for this Pacific island northeast of Australia. He said he is focusing on building resilience, including a new port and an initiative to move houses and infrastructure inland.

Also at the U.N. summit, nearly 30 global initiatives to speed action on climate change were introduced. Among them: a commitment by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, the European Commission and five nations — the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden and Germany — to invest more than $650 million in the next three years to help 300 million small farmers in developing countries address the impact of climate change on food production.

World Bank President David R. Malpass, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tuntiak Katan, an indigenous leader from the Amazon (left to right), attend the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York City in September. Gates and other leaders pledged to invest more than $650 million in the next three years to help farmers in developing countries address the impact of climate change on food production. (Getty Images/Spencer Platt)

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A few days before the summit, the World Health Organization pledged to increase its financial support to address the health effects of climate change. In a statement issued Sept. 11, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said less than 0.5 percent of international finance for climate change is directed to health, while small-island states — whose residents are most affected by climate change — receive only a fraction of that.

In November, more than 11,000 scientists from some 150 countries declared a “climate emergency” and warned of “untold suffering” if immediate action is not undertaken. Writing in Bioscience, they listed six issues that must be addressed to prevent the most catastrophic scenarios: replacing fossil fuels, cutting greenhouse gas emissions, eating less meat, restoring and protecting ecosystems, building a carbon-free economy and stabilizing population growth.

Trump Administration

The Trump administration and a bipartisan group of state governors continue to disagree on whether U.S. energy policies should focus on climate change.

The administration announced on Sept. 18 that it will curtail California's authority to set its own vehicle emission standards allowed via its long- standing waiver under the Clean Air Act. Those standards have allowed California to require more-efficient cars than required by federal regulations. Two days later, California and several other states sued the administration to stop the revocation.

Whether abolishing California's tailpipe emissions waiver will affect human health is a matter of debate. The move “could have devastating consequences for our kids' health and the air we breathe, if California were to roll over,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat. “But we will not.”

By contrast, administration officials said the Environmental Protection Agency improperly granted California's waiver because greenhouse gases do not cause specific local problems, such as asthma or lung disease, that are associated with smog and other pollutants. Abolishing California's authority to set its own emission standards “meets President Trump's commitment to establish uniform fuel economy standards for vehicles across the United States, ensuring that no state has the authority to impose its policies on everybody else in our whole country,” said Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

On Nov. 4, the administration formally notified signatories that it will withdraw from the Paris climate accord in November 2020. “In international climate discussions, we will continue to offer a realistic and pragmatic model — backed by a record of real-world results — showing innovation and open markets lead to greater prosperity, fewer emissions and more secure sources of energy,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said. “We will continue to work with our global partners to enhance resilience to the impacts of climate change and prepare for and respond to natural disasters.”

But critics noted the administration has been cutting environmental protections and condemned the decision to withdraw. “Abandoning the Paris Agreement is cruel to future generations, leaving the world less safe and productive,” said Andrew Steer, president of the World Resources Institute, a global research organization based in Washington.

Despite the administration's plan to exit the agreement, city, regional and business entities are on track to achieve about half of the U.S. commitment to cut carbon emissions, according to the American Public Health Association. More than 3,500 governmental entities, businesses, universities, tribes and other organizations have joined the “We Are Still In” movement, committing to do their part to hit America's Paris Agreement pledge.

In June, more than 75 public health groups, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Academy of Pediatrics, issued a call to action that urged government, business and community leaders to take action that promotes health by fighting climate change. Calling climate change the “greatest public health challenge of the 21st century,” the signers said leaders should comply with the Paris Agreement; transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy; encourage people to drive less; support sustainable agriculture; make sure all communities have safe and sustainable supplies of drinking water; and ensure a “just transition” for workers and communities hurt by climate change.

In a report released on Nov. 18, the U.S. Government Accountability Office warned that climate change threatens 60 percent of the nation's Superfund sites — federally designated sites contaminated by toxic waste. Extreme weather worsened by climate change, including flooding from sea level rise and more intense hurricanes, increases the risk of toxic substances being washed into waterways, communities and farmland, according to the report. Wildfires also increase the chance that health-harming pollutants will become airborne.

Extreme Weather

Recovery from Hurricane Dorian, which hit parts of the Bahamas in September, is going slowly because electricity and running water were not fully restored more than a month later. Five health clinics were destroyed on the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama, affecting some 75,000 people. When WHO Director-General Ghebreyesus toured the devastation on Oct. 1, the official death toll was 56 and about 600 people were still missing.

“Hurricane Dorian is another urgent reminder that we must address the drivers of climate change and invest more in resilient communities,” he said. “The longer we wait, the more people will suffer.”

Even before Dorian, 2019 was on pace to be one of the most disastrous years, weather-wise, in almost two decades. During the first six months of the year, an estimated 7 million people were forced out of their homes because of floods, landslides or other extreme-weather events, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, an independent organization based in Geneva. This figure included 3.4 million evacuated from their homes in India and Bangladesh because of Cyclone Fani in May. Two months earlier, 617,000 people were displaced across Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Madagascar when Cyclone Idai struck, killing more than 1,000 people.

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Acknowledging that further health effects of climate change are unavoidable, some world leaders are pivoting to focus on resilience-building efforts.

In September, the Global Commission on Adaptation — consisting of leaders from 19 countries and headed by former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon; Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and Kristalina Georgieva, chief executive officer of the World Bank — issued a “call for action” to invest in resilience initiatives. “Global actions to slow climate change are promising but insufficient,” the commission said. “We must invest in a massive effort to adapt to conditions that are now inevitable: higher temperatures, rising seas, fiercer storms, more unpredictable rainfall and more acidic oceans.”

The commission began a series of initiatives in September, several of which are focused on the health effects of global warming. One example: investments in early-warning systems, especially in the least-developed countries and small-island states, so that millions more people can protect themselves from storms or heat waves.

Los Angeles in July became the first U.S. city to form a Climate Emergency Mobilization Department to address local effects of climate change. Among other things, the department will help workers displaced by climate change find jobs.

An analysis of the 100 most populated U.S. cities identified Santa Ana, Calif., as the most vulnerable to climate change because it is likely to experience an “extreme climate event” in the next two decades and it is poorly prepared to handle it. Most of the cities with high vulnerability and low preparation to cope with such an event are in Florida, California and along the coasts of New York and New Jersey.

In April, New York City began a local version of the federal Green New Deal proposal; the city plans to invest $14 billion in initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the program will complement the city's $20 billion resiliency plan to address the threats stemming from climate-induced storms, sea level rise, extreme heat and increased precipitation. (See Graphic.)

Outlook Threats to Multiply?

Among those who monitor the health effects of climate change, the short-term forecast is not good.

“There's no question that in the next 10 years, we will continue to see what we've seen over the last few and most likely to a greater extent,” says Sarfaty, director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health. “In other words, more hot days — more scorching, searing-heat days — more souped-up storms, more torrential rains, more long, large fire seasons. More issues with food supply as the areas that are being affected by drought grow. More issues with the availability of fish and other food that comes from the sea as the waters get warmer.”

Benjamin, the American Public Health Association's executive director, agrees that the health effects of climate change will get worse before they get better.

“But it will get better,” he says. “I'm confident that America is waking up. In fact, the whole world is waking up more and more on this.”

It remains to be seen whether people are waking up — and taking action — quickly enough to avert disaster. Jessica Wolff, U.S. director of climate and health for Health Care Without Harm, points to clear guidance from the IPCC: To avoid climate disaster, global warming must be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which requires a 45 percent decrease in carbon dioxide emissions from 2010 levels by 2030.

“The future could be really bright, and in fact, solving climate change would allow us to address serious health equity and energy equity issues around the world,” she says. “There's opportunity that we could actually improve health by addressing climate. It's just a question if we're able to do that.”

Harvard's Bernstein says that some simple steps can mitigate climate change, build resilience and promote health. One example: planting trees, which reduces carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Replacing concrete with green space reduces air temperature in cities, he says.

“We also have an ever-growing pile of evidence that exposure to green space improves health, mental health, school performance and a whole suite of other stuff,” he says. “So helping people think about protecting themselves ties into the solutions for climate change itself.”

Climatologist Michaels at the Competitive Enterprise Institute says such predictions are fanciful: “Anybody who thinks that we can quote-unquote ‘stop global warming’ is either deceiving themselves or, if they are saying it in public while they know better, deceiving others.”

That said, he says many experts frequently overstate the magnitude and pace of climate change and that, in affluent countries, people will adapt to the warmer world, averting the worst health effects.

Rep. Carter, of the House Select Committee on Climate Change, expects the U.S. energy sector to be part of that adaptation. He says the country's success in coal, oil and gas development gives him confidence the United States can become a leader in renewable energy. “We need to create and incentivize new technology and infrastructure in the most efficient and affordable ways possible and in a way that creates new American jobs and keeps America ahead,” he says.

Rauch of Moms Clean Air Force takes encouragement from the work being done at the city and state levels. “There's this incredible movement to have cities and states basically take ownership of their climate pollution,” she says. “And they are moving to power their economies with renewable energy and to build incentives into their urban planning that have people using less gas and less electricity.”

That kind of commitment keeps Benjamin from despairing. “It's not so overwhelming a problem that we can't start working on it today,” he says. “My point is: Do what you can to reduce your own carbon footprint, and then, advocate for changes at work, home and community.”

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Pro/Con Will climate change set off a global health catastrophe?

Pro Rupert Read Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of East Anglia, and Spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion. Written for CQ Researcher, November 2019

Dangerous anthropogenic climate change is having a very real impact on the lives of many people around the world, especially those living in climates that are already hot. But that's just the tip of the (melting) iceberg.

Tragically, the situation is virtually guaranteed to get much worse, whatever we do, for about the next 30 to 40 years. When you put carbon into the atmosphere, it stays there for decades or even for centuries, and this is likely to set off further massive ice loss and methane-release. So the climate disasters that we are already seeing are a result primarily of carbon that was released before 1990. Since 1990, we've emitted the same amount of carbon as in the entire previous existence of the human race.

That obviously means that even in the best-case scenario, there will be health disasters around the world. Here is what the World Health Organization says: “Climate change is impacting human lives and health in a variety of ways. It threatens the essential ingredients of good health — clean air, safe drinking water, nutritious food supply and safe shelter — and has the potential to undermine decades of progress in global health.”

We are staring down the barrel of the uncontrolled collapse of our civilization, and whether that occurs through water shortages or food shortages or other means, you will see the mother of all health catastrophes.

It's too late to find a way of perpetuating a civilization organized as our civilization is currently organized. We needed to switch to genuinely renewable energies about a generation ago. All there is time for now is a very rapid bringing down of our deadly emissions and a cessation of our destruction of natural habitats. We have to rapidly reduce our impacts on the Earth now, or our civilization will simply collapse, within a generation or so, maybe less.

Is that collapse really likely to happen? Common sense would say no, but previous “common sense” — an economy based on fossil fuels could keep growing forever, for example — could be said to have actually gotten us into this extreme crisis.

I am incredibly encouraged by the waking up that now seems to be occurring around the world: the climate strikes, Extinction Rebellion and more. It's not too late to make a difference. So it's time for us to try, as a last-ditch effort, to save ourselves.

Con Jessica Wolff U.S. Director of Climate and Health, Health Care Without Harm. Written for CQ Researcher, November 2019

Climate change is already affecting health, but preventing a global health catastrophe will depend on the decisions we make today. In 2018, the Special Report on Climate Change by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that continuing with a “business as usual” emissions scenario will likely have catastrophic impacts on human health.

However, the report also found that by limiting warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius, we can dramatically reduce the risks to the climate and human health. To achieve this target, we must cut greenhouse gas emissions 45 percent by 2030 and reach “net-zero” emissions by midcentury. The good news is, many of the actions we need to reduce emissions by roughly half within the next decade are already underway around the world. We just need greater ambition to accelerate and scale up these solutions.

The Lancet said tackling climate change could be the “greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century,” as many of the solutions that mitigate climate change will also create opportunities for reducing poverty and promoting health equity worldwide.

In addition, the health care industry can be a climate-smart, innovative sector that protects public health from climate change, while using its purchasing power to lead the transition to a low-carbon economy. Representing 18 percent of the U.S. economy and 10 percent of the global economy, the health care sector can have a substantial impact by investing in sustainable energy, food and transportation systems for every community.

For example, members of the U.S. Health Care Climate Council, a group of 19 health systems representing 500 hospitals, are implementing innovative climate solutions in their facilities, building climate resilience in the communities they serve and using their trusted voice and purchasing power to move policy and markets. At the global level, our health care climate challenge includes 18,000 health facilities in 30 countries pledging to adopt this “climate-smart health care” approach by committing to reduce their carbon emissions and helping their communities become more resilient to climate change.

If we focus on adapting to the changes already happening, we can safeguard those who are most vulnerable, while also reducing the emissions that worsen climate change and threaten health. As anchor institutions and major employers, hospitals can take many vitally important actions that build resilience, such as transitioning to renewable electricity and investing in a sustainable local food economy. Taking action now will produce immediate and sustained benefits to human health around the globe.

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Chronology 1900s–1950s Amid industrialization, researchers study effects of greenhouse gas emissions on the Earth's atmosphere.

1904 Svante Arrhenius of Sweden becomes the first scientist to theorize that the human use of fossil fuels is causing carbon dioxide to build up in the atmosphere and increase the Earth's temperature; he considers it a positive development that will enable the world “to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates.”

1938 British engineer Guy S. Callendar presents evidence supporting Arrhenius' belief that humans' burning of fossil fuels was behind global warming; he calculates that the mean global temperature had risen close to 0.3 degrees Celsius over the previous century.

1957 Scientist Roger Revelle tells a U.S. congressional committee that global warming might someday turn parts of the U.S. into “real deserts” and that the Arctic Ocean might become ice-free.

1960s–1980s Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is accurately measured for the first time.

1963 After a meeting convened by the private Conservation Foundation, scientists begin framing greenhouse warming as an environmental problem that could endanger human health.

1970 The first Earth Day highlights a growing awareness about global environmental degradation.

1972 Fears about climate change emerge when severe droughts spread across Africa as well as India and Ukraine, creating a world food crisis.

1982 Scientists document strong global warming since the mid-1970s, with 1981 the warmest year on record since collection of temperature data began.

1988 With international concern about climate change growing, the United Nations creates the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to conduct research on environmental and health effects.

1990s–Present As extreme weather becomes more common, awareness of climate change's impact on health grows.

1995 The IPCC documents evidence that human activity is contributing to global warming and declares that serious warming is likely within the next century.

2005 Hurricane Katrina, a Category 5 storm, devastates the U.S. Gulf Coast, triggering debate over whether global warming increases storm intensity.

2007 A Gallup survey finds that about 40 percent of adults in 119 countries have never heard of climate change.

2009 Experts warn that global warming is arriving at a faster and more dangerous pace than anticipated just a few years earlier.

2014 A survey by the Yale University Program on Climate Change Communication finds that 61 percent of respondents had given little or no thought to how global warming might affect people's health until they took the survey.

2015 The Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change, a collaboration of the U.N., research institutions and governments, cites a “widespread lack of awareness of climate change as a health issue” and says health professionals must mobilize to protect the health of future generations…. Representatives from 195 countries, including the U.S., and the European Union sign the Paris Agreement on climate change, pledging to hold the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

2016 The U.S. government says the effects of climate change worsen a wide range of chronic conditions — Alzheimer's disease, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, mental illness and obesity.

2017 Hurricane Maria slams Puerto Rico, killing thousands and damaging the island's health care infrastructure. Global warming contributed to the storm's ferocity, scientists say…. Republican President Trump announces he will withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, saying the pact hurts economic growth.

2018 The IPCC says limiting global warming to 1.5 Celsius above preindustrial levels is “possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented transitions in all aspects of societies.” … Seventeen state governors who belong to the U.S. Climate Alliance pledge to fulfill Paris accord goals and announce initiatives to cut carbon emissions by more than 26 percent by 2025.

2019 More than 70 U.S. medical societies say climate change constitutes the “greatest public health challenge of the 21st century” and urge policymakers to take immediate action to stem greenhouse gas emissions (June)…. At a U.N. Climate Action Summit, the World Bank and others pledge to invest more than $650 million in the next three years to help 300 million small farmers in developing countries address the impact of climate change on food production and thus forestall malnutrition (September).

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Short Features

On a Warming Planet, Heat Waves Are Becoming More Dangerous

Deaths will rise if nations don't help people adapt, expert warns.

During a heat wave in Boston last summer, an elderly man showed up at Massachusetts General Hospital's emergency department in the middle of the night with a core temperature of more than 105 degrees Fahrenheit.

“The ambulance crew said his apartment was the hottest they had ever been in,” said Dr. Renee Salas, the physician who treated him. “It was on the top floor with only one window — no air conditioning and no fan.”

Extreme heat is the most widespread health threat associated with climate change, with 157 million more people around the world exposed to heat wave events in 2017 than in 2000, according to the Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change, an interdisciplinary research collaboration between 27 leading academic institutions, the United Nations and intergovernmental agencies.

That is deadly news, says nurse Adrienne Wald, a member of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, an advocacy group based in Mount Rainier, Md.

“Heat waves are the deadliest of any extreme weather-related events in the United States — more deadly than tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and floods combined,” says Wald, an associate professor of nursing at the College of New Rochelle in New York who studies how climate change affects health.

The U.S. Global Change Research Program, which coordinates federal government research on climate change, defines a heat wave as two or more consecutive days in which daily lows exceed the 85th percentile of historical July and August temperatures. By that definition, the number of heat waves in 50 American cities has tripled since the 1960s.

A relatively slight change in average annual temperature translates into a big increase in extreme heat events. “A warming of 1 degree Celsius [1.8 degrees Fahrenheit], which is what we've seen thus far, can lead to a tenfold increase in the frequency of 100-degree days in New York City, for example,” said Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

The most severe heat-related illness is heatstroke, defined as a core temperature above 104 degrees Fahrenheit, which can be fatal. Less serious problems range from mild heat cramps to heat exhaustion, which may include headache and nausea.

A group of Navy trainees cool off at the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., during a 2018 heat wave. The deadliest of extreme-weather events, heat waves can lead to heat stroke and heat exhaustion. (AFP/Getty Images/Saul Loeb)

Beyond that, higher temperatures contribute to conditions that spread vector- and water-borne diseases, including dengue fever and malaria. Heat waves also are associated with increased aggression and violence, according to the American Public Health Association. The health effects of extreme heat disproportionately affect vulnerable people, including children and the elderly, pregnant women, low-income individuals and families, people who have chronic illnesses and outdoor workers.

The impact of heat-related illness extends beyond those who get sick. In 2017, 153 billion hours of labor were lost because of heat, nearly double the amount in 2000. Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, says employers have to be more careful about protecting workers than in the past.

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“Increasingly, if you're a farmer with workers in the field, you're probably seeing more days when it's too hot to work or when you have to do more things to protect your workers,” he says.

Heat waves are likely to get steadily worse as the planet warms, according to new research by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a science advocacy organization in Cambridge, Mass. Its researchers used computer modeling to project how many days the United States will experience a heat index — a National Weather Service measure of how hot it really feels when temperature is combined with humidity — of 100 degrees Fahrenheit or greater. They produced what they called a relatively conservative estimate: the number of days in which the heat index hits 100 degrees could double and the number of days with a reading of 105 could triple by the middle of the century.

Currently, people — particularly those older than 65 years — in Europe and the eastern Mediterranean are much more vulnerable to heat exposure than those in Africa and Southeast Asia probably because their populations are older and more urban. Computer modeling techniques have also been used to project that heat-related deaths outside of Europe, particularly in Colombia, the Philippines, Brazil and other tropical countries, will rise sharply.

“If we cannot find a way to mitigate the climate change and help people adapt to heat waves, there will be a big increase of heat-wave-related deaths in the future, particularly in the poor countries located around the equator,” said Yuming Guo, a physician researcher at Monash University in Australia.

In the United States, at least, heat waves do not need to mean death, says Wald, the nursing professor.

“You don't have to die of heat stroke,” she says. “It's 100 percent preventable if it's identified early and treatment is initiated immediately.”

Local communities have to develop climate action plans specific to their own population, and residents must be educated about how to avoid heat stroke, she says.

“We're going to have to educate employers about occupational health,” Wald says. “You can't have people out doing agricultural work and construction work during a heat wave without taking rest breaks and hydrating and other things to stay safe.”

— Lola Butcher

[1] “Interview with Dr. Renee Salas on the effects of climate change on human health and health systems,” The New England Journal of Medicine, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y64s5l4y.

[2] Nick Watts et al., “The 2018 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: shaping the health of nations for centuries to come,” The Lancet, Nov. 28, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ya76m2nl.

[3] “Heat Waves,” U.S. Global Change Research Program, https://tinyurl.com/yxf4kg86.

[4] Kendra Pierre-Louis, “Heat Waves in the Age of Climate Change: Longer, More Frequent and More Dangerous,” The New York Times, July 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6qfo35a.

[5] Adrienne Wald, “Emergency Department Visits and Costs for Heat-Related Illness Due to Extreme Heat or Heat Waves in the United States: An Integrative Review,” ResearchGate, January/February 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3oshuc7.

[6] Watts et al., op. cit.; Renee Salas, Paige Knappenberger and Jeremy Hess, “Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change Brief for the United States of America,” American Public Health Association, Nov. 28, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y57msg92.

[7] Watts et al., ibid.

[8] Jamie Ducharme, “Scientists Predict Climate Change Will Make Dangerous Heat Waves Far More Common,” Time, July 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y44a9xn7.

[9] Watts et al., op. cit.

[10] Sebastian Malo, “Scientists predict major increase in heatwave deaths as world warms,” Reuters, July 31, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y44sl7dc.

[11] “Heatwave deaths will rise steadily by 2080 as globe warms up,” ScienceDaily, Aug. 1, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y9hy74qj.

Climate Change Exacts High Physical, Emotional Toll in Puerto Rico

Repeated storms have battered the U.S. territory.

In Puerto Rico, the hits from climate change just keep coming.

First came a sea level rise of more than six inches since 1880, which contributed to nearly 80 floods in the past 25 years.

Then came a growing number of extreme-heat days, followed by more-devastating hurricanes, including Irma and Maria in 2017, which struck the U.S. territory within two weeks of each other and left the island without power and potable water for months. The health impact of these weather events on Puerto Ricans, according to experts, has been diverse and devastating.

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“There is property in several municipalities that has already been invaded by the sea where people are not able to live anymore,” says Carissa Cabán-Alemán, a psychiatrist at Florida International University in Miami. Research after Hurricane Katrina, the Category 5 storm that struck New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005, found that displaced populations have increased health risks and psychosocial challenges.

Heavy rains and flooding also increase the risk of insect-borne illnesses such as Zika, which is transmitted by mosquitoes. In 2016, Puerto Rico experienced almost 35,000 cases of Zika infection in which symptoms were present, compared with 6,218 cases elsewhere in the United States and its territories.

Besides water-borne illnesses, Puerto Rico has experienced an increase of 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in average annual temperature since 1950, imperiling those with cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other conditions exacerbated by high temperatures. Puerto Rico's childhood asthma rate is the highest of any U.S. state or territory.

Hurricane Maria, meanwhile, produced the “single largest maximum rainfall event” in Puerto Rico since researchers started keeping records in 1956, according to a study by the American Geophysical Union, a Washington-based organization that studies the atmosphere. Climate change does not cause hurricanes, but warmer ocean temperatures can result in hurricanes dropping extraordinarily high amounts of rain. In the case of Maria, the devastating amount of rainfall — 41 inches in a single day — was linked to global warming, said David Keellings, a geographer at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, who was the study's lead author.

Damage to buildings was so extensive that, a year later, some hospitals were not operating at full capacity. The Puerto Rican island of Vieques is still using a temporary hospital and patients must travel to the main island to seek specialty care.

After Hurricane Maria destroyed thousands of homes in Puerto Rico in September 2017, many remained in ruins a year later. The U.S. territory, including its health care infrastructure, is struggling to recover from the storm, which, by one estimate, caused nearly 3,000 deaths. (Getty Images/Bloomberg/Xavier Garcia)

“Most people who need to go to the [big] island for medical service try to get on the first boat that leaves,” said Elda Carrasquillo, who coordinates health workshops in Vieques through a group called Taller Salud that works to improve women's access to health care.

The health impact is perhaps most visible in the death toll — and the difficulty of even measuring it. Three months after the hurricane, Puerto Rico's Department of Public Safety listed just 64 deaths, reflecting the fact that government agencies were too damaged to get an accurate count. One 2018 survey that included “indirect deaths” resulting from water and electricity shortages, worsened chronic conditions and delayed medical treatment estimated 2,975 fatalities; another calculated 5,740 deaths.

Puerto Rico's experience shows the danger of a common climate-change effect: reduced access to clean water. After the hurricane, some people drank or used water from ponds, lakes and streams, risking exposure to disease-causing microbes. Local health care providers reported increases in vomiting, diarrhea, pink eye, asthma and scabies related to unclean water. A month after the storm, Puerto Rico had tallied 121 cases of, and four confirmed deaths from, leptospirosis, a bacterial illness caused by unclean water. The island normally records about 60 cases a year.

An estimated 130,000 Puerto Ricans left the islands after the hurricane. According to a 2018 article in the medical journal BMC Medicine, displaced populations face increased health risks, including food insecurity and the spread of infectious diseases. Agnes Torres Rivera, a graduate student at the University of Puerto Rico, was one of nearly 2,200 island residents who moved to Connecticut in the hurricane's wake. “It forced thousands of people like myself to flee home and build a new life on the United States mainland,” she said.

Beyond the physical damage, the hurricane took a heavy emotional toll. Studies found that in the first six months after Maria, suicides increased by 26 percent over the same period from the year before. A survey of more than 96,000 schoolchildren several months after the hurricane found that 7.2 percent suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

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The team that conducted the survey said they had expected the PTSD rate to be even higher, prompting the suggestion that Puerto Rico's cultural value of familismo — the importance of family and community — may be at work. “Puerto Ricans place a high value on these social connections,” said Regan Stewart, a clinical psychologist at the Medical University of South Carolina who was part of the team. “We know from the literature that social support may be a protective factor after a traumatic event.”

Since the hurricane, psychiatrist Cabán-Alemán has worked in several underserved, mostly rural communities in Puerto Rico to facilitate healing and emotional recovery. She says residents are coping with a long-term socioeconomic crisis, problems with the government — Gov. Ricardo Rosselló resigned under fire in August — and the myriad effects of climate change. But, she adds, the hurricane's destruction galvanized some people to work for positive change. She points to emerging agroecology projects — methods to produce food without damaging natural resources — as one example.

“Amidst all that they are going through, there are many initiatives to do all kinds of projects,” she says. “I have a lot of hope, and I am very excited about all of the empowerment that Puerto Rican communities have engaged since Hurricane Maria.”

— Lola Butcher

[12] Jane Palmer, “How to survive climate change: a lesson from Hurricane Maria,” Mosaic, March 21, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ydes8rbz.

[13] Renee Salas, Paige Knappenberger and Jeremy Hess, “2018 Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change Brief for the United States of America,” American Public Health Association, Nov. 28, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y4xk545v.

[14] Josh Michaud and Jennifer Kates, “Public Health in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria,” Issue Brief, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Nov. 17, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yct2rejw.

[15] Jennifer Runkle, Kenneth Kunkel and Laura Stevens, “Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands State Climate Summary,” NOAA Technical Report NESDIS 149-PR, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y3mjexsv; Palmer, op. cit.

[16] “Climate change to blame for Hurricane Maria's extreme rainfall,” American Geophysical Union, ScienceDaily, April 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yyoq3f39.

[17] Steven Ross Johnson, “Puerto Rico's slow recovery leaves health system exposed for next major storm,” Modern Healthcare, Sept. 8, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yxo73ydl; Nicole Avecedo, “The Puerto Rican island of Vieques still has no hospital. Democrats demand answers from FEMA,” NBC News, May 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6jax4ek.

[18] Avecedo, ibid.

[19] Salas, Knappenberger and Hess, op. cit.

[20] Michaud and Kates, op. cit.

[21] John Sutter, “130,000 left Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, Census Bureau says,” CNN, Dec. 19, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yx35x445; Patricia Schwerdtle, Kathryn Bowen and Celia McMichael, “The health impacts of climate-related migration,” BMC Medicine, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y4eod7xn.

[22] Agnes M. Torres Rivera, “Hurricane Maria Made Me A Climate Change Refugee,” Teen Vogue, May 7, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8wegnoe.

[23] Salas, op. cit.; Helen Adams, “Psychologists release results of survey of ‘Maria generation’ kids,” ScienceDaily, April 30, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3oulde8.

[24] Adams, ibid.

[25] Patricia Mazzei and Frances Robles, “Ricardo Rosselló, Puerto Rico's Governor, Resigns After Protests,” The New York Times, July 24, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5jzgy9l.

Bibliography Books

Kenner, Alison , Breathtaking: Asthma Care in a Time of Climate Change , University of Minnesota Press, 2018. An ethnographer examines how a changing climate affects asthma and its treatment.

Lemery, Jay, and Paul Auerbach , Environmedics: The Impact of Climate Change on Human Health , Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Emergency medicine physicians use patients' case studies to illustrate the effects of environmental change on human health.

Wallace-Wells, David , The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming , Tim Duggan Books, 2019. A New York magazine columnist describes a range of current and anticipated crises — food shortages, refugee emergencies, economic turmoil and more — attributable to climate change.

Articles

Anderson, Meg , “As Rising Heat Bakes U.S. Cities, The Poor Often Feel It Most,” NPR, Sept. 3, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3jmtyxr. An interactive tool shows that low-income neighborhoods, because of their lack of green cover, are more likely to be hotter than their wealthier counterparts.

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https://tinyurl.com/ydes8rbz

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https://tinyurl.com/yx35x445

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http://worldcat.org/search?q=ti:Breathtaking:+Asthma+Care+in+a+Time+of+Climate+Change

http://worldcat.org/search?q=ti:Environmedics:+The+Impact+of+Climate+Change+on+Human+Health

http://worldcat.org/search?q=ti:The+Uninhabitable+Earth:+Life+After+Warming

https://tinyurl.com/y3jmtyxr

Fialka, John , “Reducing China's CO2 Emissions Would Curb Deadly Air Pollution in the U.S.,” Scientific American, July 26, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6peyco7. China's efforts to curb air pollution could mean nearly 2,000 fewer premature deaths in the United States by 2030, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study found.

Holden, Emily , “‘Like a sunburn on your lungs’: how does the climate crisis impact health?” The Guardian, Sept. 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3fqfh8h. A roundup of health effects shows that climate change affects virtually every medical specialty, from heart and lung diseases to digestive illnesses.

Koh, Howard K., and Gina A. McCarthy , “Private and Public Sector Responses to Climate Change,” JAMA Forum, March 28, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y355j73f. Two experts say urgency is growing across the globe to deal with climate change and its impact on health.

Newkirk, Vann R. II , “How Climate Change Is Challenging American Health Care,” The Atlantic, Dec 6, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y5nacm3e. An international collaboration tracks how climate change is degrading human health and suggests ways to mitigate damage from a warming planet.

Pierre-Louis, Kendra , “Heat Waves in the Age of Climate Change: Longer, More Frequent and More Dangerous,” The New York Times, July 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6qfo35a. Heat waves are increasingly threatening people's health, especially the elderly and young.

Reports and Studies

Campbell-Lendrum, Diarmid , et al., “COP24 Special Report: Health and Climate Change,” World Health Organization, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y4vd3xoe. The United Nations health agency warns that residents in poorer nations and on small islands are especially vulnerable to the health hazards of climate change.

Crimmins, A. , et al., “The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment,” U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/jydxwaz. Experts representing eight federal agencies document scientists' understanding of how climate change affects public health.

Cutler, David, and Francesca Dominici , “A Breath of Bad Air: Cost of the Trump Environmental Agenda May Lead to 80,000 Extra Deaths per Decade,” JAMA Forum, June 12, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yxhsm2wk. Two Harvard University economics professors list more than 60 U.S. environmental rules that the Trump administration has reversed or proposed to reverse and projects the health effects that will likely result.

Eckelman, Matthew J., and Jodi D. Sherman , “Estimated Global Disease Burden from US Health Care Sector Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” American Journal of Public Health, April 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y4clw6jr. Environmental engineers project how greenhouse gas emissions from the health care industry will contribute to malnutrition and other health harms.

Ghebreyesus, Tedros , “Health, environment and climate change,” World Health Organization, April 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3zupkk5. The organization offers its vision on how the world and the medical community need to respond to environmental health risks and challenges between now and 2030.

Watts, Nick , et al., “The 2018 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: shaping the health of nations for centuries to come,” The Lancet, Nov. 28, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ya76m2nl. Researchers from every continent assess progress on 41 indicators tracking the health effects of climate change.

The Next Step Doctors

Abbott, Brianna , “Medical Schools Are Pushed to Train Doctors for Climate Change,” The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 7, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4b2dmy4. As changing climates increasingly affect health outcomes, medical schools are beginning to include climate-related education in their curriculums.

Bains, Camille , “Doctors say political activism part of their jobs on issues affecting health,” National Observer, Oct. 7, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y65ld3lw. Canadian doctors are becoming more vocal about efforts to curb climate change as the negative health effects become apparent.

Howard, Beth , “The rising health threats of a hot planet,” Association of American Medical Colleges, Oct. 8, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5t4hnzl. Some doctors have noticed that increasing temperatures and decreasing air quality have worsened symptoms among patients, particularly those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Extreme Weather

Adams, Helen , “Psychologists release results of survey of ‘Maria generation’ kids,” ScienceDaily, April 30, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3oulde8. A study found that 7 percent of children who survived Hurricane Maria suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Berlinger, Joshua , “Nearly 1,500 deaths linked to French heat waves,” CNN, Sept. 9, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y694gjhu. Heat waves brought about the highest recorded temperature ever in France this summer and contributed to nearly 1,500 deaths.

Farge, Emma , “Climate change hampers progress on fighting epidemics: Global Fund,” Reuters, Oct. 22, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y646annd. Warmer temperatures and more-intense cyclones are driving an increase in malaria cases in Africa.

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Health Trends

Jagannathan, Meera , “How climate change could contribute to racial maternal-health disparities,” MarketWatch, Oct. 21, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yy589f2d. Pregnant women's exposure to extreme heat increases their chance of being hospitalized — and as temperatures rise in coming decades, maternal health for women of color and for the poor, who are less likely to have access to air conditioning, could be particularly affected.

Schumaker, Erin , “Why climate change is also a public health problem,” ABC News, Sept. 25, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yya78p2g. Health experts say that an increase in extreme-weather events could worsen mental health outcomes and lead to a lack of access to medical care when hospitals are damaged in storms.

Thompson, Dennis , “Experts: Climate Change ‘Threat to Human Well-Being’” HealthDay News, Nov. 5, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/r5qd4te. A global coalition of scientists warns that climate change would cause “untold human suffering” and that negative health effects, such as the spread of infectious diseases, have already begun.

Mental Health

Ro, Christine , “The harm from worrying about climate change,” BBC Future, Oct. 10, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6nm8oa8. Psychologists are divided on how to best treat mental health struggles that stem from people worrying about climate change.

Wetsman, Nicole , “How Communities Can Build Psychological Resilience to Disaster,” CityLab, Nov. 7, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3lr2fe3. Mental health experts say being informed, volunteering and staying socially conscious will help communities prepare for disasters that could lead to trauma.

Wulfhorst, Ellen , “Climate change-fueled US wildfires take toll on those who fight them,” Reuters, Nov. 8, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3ghk87e. A study found that nearly half of U.S. firefighters experience sleep troubles, emotional fatigue and other health problems, and PTSD is a growing problem for firefighters battling California wildfires.

Contacts American Medical Association AMA Plaza, 330 N. Wabash Ave., Suite 39300, Chicago, IL 60611 312-464-4782 ama-assn.org Association of physicians that educates doctors about how climate change affects health.

American Public Health Association 800 I St., N.W., Washington, DC 20001 202-777-2742 apha.org Organization that advocates policies to mitigate climate change.

Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment 401 Park Drive, 4th Floor West, Suite 415, Boston, MA 02215 617-384-8350 hsph.harvard.edu/c-change Harvard University research unit that seeks to inform climate policy.

Environmental Change and Security Program Woodrow Wilson Center, Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, 1 Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20004-3027 202-691-4000 wilsoncenter.org/program/environmental-change-and-security-program Nonpartisan policy research organization that examines the connections between climate change and health.

Health Care Without Harm 12355 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 680, Reston, VA 20191 703-860-9790 noharm-uscanada.org Global organization working to make the health care industry more sustainable.

Moms Clean Air Force 257 Park Ave. South, New York, NY 10010 917-887-0146 momscleanairforce.org Parents' group advocating for a healthier environment.

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http://ama-assn.org

http://apha.org

http://hsph.harvard.edu/c-change

http://wilsoncenter.org/program/environmental-change-and-security-program

http://noharm-uscanada.org

http://momscleanairforce.org

U.S. Energy Information Administration 1000 Independence Ave., S.W., Washington, DC 20585 202-586-8800 eia.gov Branch of the U.S. Department of Energy that publishes statistics about energy use worldwide.

Footnotes [1] Meg Anderson and Sean McMinn, “As Rising Heat Bakes U.S. Cities, The Poor Often Feel It Most,” NPR, Sept. 3, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3jmtyxr.

[2] Ibid.; “State of the Climate in 2018 shows accelerating climate change impacts: Report,” press release, United Nations, March 28, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6ch2kdv.

[3] Emily Holden, “‘Like a sunburn on your lungs’: how does the climate crisis impact health?” The Guardian, Sept. 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3fqfh8h.

[4] “COP24 Special report: Health & Climate Change,” World Health Organization, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y38usnzn.

[5] Nick Watts et al., “The 2018 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: shaping the health of nations for centuries to come,” The Lancet, Nov. 28, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ya76m2nl.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Renee Salas, Paige Knappenberger and Jeremy Hess, “2018 Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change Brief for the United States of America,” American Public Health Association, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y4xk545v.

[8] “COP24 Special report: Health & Climate Change,” op. cit.

[9] Moira Fagan and Christine Huang, “A look at how people around the world view climate change,” Pew Research Center, April 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y53ebt7w.

[10] Anthony Leiserowitz et al., “Climate Change in the American Mind: April 2019,” Yale Program for Climate Change Communication, June 27, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3pm9ery.

[11] Fagan and Huang, op. cit.; Chris Cillizza, “Donald Trump doesn't think much about climate change, in 20 quotes,” CNN, Aug. 8, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/ycgw6alq; Chris Cillizza, “Donald Trump buried a climate change report because ‘I don't believe it,’” CNN, Nov. 27, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y9bnwkza; and Kate Yoder, “On climate change, younger Republicans now sound like Democrats,” Grist, Sept. 9, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y248nrpc.

[12] Camila Domonoske, “So What Exactly Is In The Paris Climate Accord?” NPR, June 1, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y57dke37.

[13] Michael Shear, “Trump Will Withdraw U.S. From Paris Climate Agreement,” The New York Times, June 1, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y8zgpmsa; Lisa Friedman, “Trump Serves Notice to Quit Paris Climate Agreement,” The New York Times, Nov. 4, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3s62mqu.

[14] Watts et al., op. cit.

[15] Matthew Taylor and Jonathan Watts, “Revealed: the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions,” The Guardian, Oct. 9, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y28jdhwa.

[16] “How much carbon dioxide is produced when different fuels are burned?” U.S. Energy Information Administration, June 4, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/kypxsun.

[17] “Sir David Attenborough Launches UN Campaign to Promote Climate Action by the People,” United Nations, Dec. 3, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y2zfj22n; David Wallace-Wells, “Time to Panic,” The New York Times, Feb. 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3jobsmm.

[18] “COP24 Special report: Health & Climate Change,” op. cit.

[19] “Health benefits far outweigh the costs of meeting climate change goals,” press release, World Health Organization, Dec. 5, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ycez4m4h.

[20] Coral Davenport, “Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040,” The New York Times, Oct. 7, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8kv9gfo.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid.

[23] “Adapt Now: A Global Call for Leadership on Climate Resilience,” Global Commission on Adaptation, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4lshmnz.

[24] Martha Bebinger, “Has Your Doctor Talked To You About Climate Change?” NPR, July 13, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yyr86mz7.

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[25] Ibid.

[26] “Lancet Report: Education is Key to Climate Change Response,” Columbia University, Nov. 29, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y6cymb89.

[27] Salas, Knappenberger and Hess, op. cit.

[28] Lulu Garcia-Navarro, “How Climate Change Is Affecting Residents' Health in Miami,” NPR, March 24, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4aymjuf.

[29] “About Us,” Florida Clinicians for Climate Action, https://tinyurl.com/yym4ym2h.

[30] Cole Latimer, “Australia one of the countries most exposed to climate change, bank warns,” Sydney Morning Herald, March 22, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y77zr9zy; Katie Hill, “‘Eco-Anxiety’ Is Very Real And It's On The Rise,” 10 Daily, July 20, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yxvtjjs7.

[31] Watts et al., op. cit.

[32] David Reidmiller et al., “2018: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume 2,” U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ybw3k3rr; “Extreme weather events linked to poor mental health,” ScienceDaily, Sept. 5, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3rglofr; and Arun Rath, “Heat And Aggression: How Hot Weather Makes It Easy For Us To Offend,” WGBH, July 11, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/wjjvpox.

[33] Dan MacDougall, “‘We need to talk about ecological grief’: Greenlanders traumatised by climate emergency,” The Guardian, Aug. 12, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6xg2tem.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Jonathan Watts, “Greta Thunberg, schoolgirl climate change warrior: ‘Some people can let things go. I can't,’” The Guardian, March 11, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yyfeo6z3.

[36] Zoë Schlanger, “We need to talk about ‘ecoanxiety’: Climate change is causing PTSD, anxiety, and depression on a mass scale,” Quartz, April 3, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/kgg8yuk.

[37] Isobel Whitcomb, “The Barrage of Bad News About Climate Change Is Triggering ‘Eco-Anxiety,’ Psychologists Say,” Live Science, July 2, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yylo7fyk.

[38] David Wogan, “Why we know about the greenhouse gas effect,” Scientific American, May 16, 2013, https://tinyurl.com/y8fehazt.

[39] Steve Graham, “Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927),” NASA Earth Observatory, Jan. 18, 2000, https://tinyurl.com/y9vhbo6d.

[40] Ed Hawkins, “Global temperatures: 75 years after Callendar,” Climate Lab Book, April 22, 2013, https://tinyurl.com/vf947kw; Spencer Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming, January 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yybpcajn; James Fleming, “The Callendar Effect: The Life and Work of Guy Stewart Callendar (1898-1964), the Scientist Who Established the Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change,” American Meteorological Society, 2007, https://tinyurl.com/sog9q4b.

[41] Weart., Ibid.

[42] Ibid.

[43] Eliza Griswold, “How ‘Silent Spring’ Ignited the Environmental Movement,” The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 21, 2012, https://tinyurl.com/y8xzln8l.

[44] Weart., op. cit.

[45] “Potential Implications of Trends in World Population, Food Production, and Climate,” CIA, made available through The Black Vault, August 1974, https://tinyurl.com/yc36rosb.

[46] Walter Sullivan, “Study Finds Warming Trend That Could Raise Sea Levels,” The New York Times, Aug. 22, 1981, https://tinyurl.com/ycc88cp2.

[47] J.T. Houghton, G.J. Jenkins and J.J. Ephraums, eds., “Climate Change: The IPCC Scientific Assessment,” U.N. International Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, 1990, https://tinyurl.com/y6hyrc6w.

[48] Riley E. Dunlap, “Partisan Gap on Global Warming Grows,” Gallup, May 29, 2008, https://tinyurl.com/y7toqhw8.

[49] Jay Lemery and Paul Auerbach, Environmedics: The Impact of Climate Change on Human Health (2017).

[50] Ibid.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Pete Hammond, “Al Gore, Paramount And Participant Celebrate Oscar Winner ‘An Inconvenient Truth's’ 10th Anniversary,” Deadline, May 25, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/yy7x553g; “The Nobel Peace Prize 2007,” Nobel Prize, 2007, https://tinyurl.com/y354f3mh.

[53] “New York City Global Warming Survey,” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, May 13, 2008, https://tinyurl.com/y5atqghu.

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[54] “Climate Change in the American Mind: Americans' Global Warming Beliefs and Attitudes in November 2013,” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, Jan. 16, 2014, https://tinyurl.com/y4qvc33m.

[55] Paul Brown, “From the archive, 3 June 1992: Earth Summit: Long and troubled road to Rio,” The Guardian, June 13, 2012, https://tinyurl.com/wlz87o8.

[56] “Back in time: What was Rio 1992?” United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe, https://tinyurl.com/vcj3qgb.

[57] “Kyoto Protocol Fast Facts,” CNN Library, March 21, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yc5q3xlu; “What Is the Kyoto Protocol?” U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, https://tinyurl.com/r8pk7n8.

[58] Justin Worland, “World Approves Historic ‘Paris Agreement’ to Address Climate Change,” Time, Dec. 12, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/v7cbodk; Monica Dean, “4 Key Findings on Climate Change and Health,” United Nations Foundation, Jan. 9, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/tus4wah.

[59] A. Crimmins et al., “The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment,” U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/jydxwaz.

[60] “Health Organisations Urged to Divest From Fossil Fuels,” World Medical Association, Oct. 22, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y4ywghhe.

[61] Michael Shear, “Trump Will Withdraw U.S. From Paris Climate Agreement,” The New York Times, June 1, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y8zgpmsa; Lisa Friedman, “Trump Signs Order Rolling Back Environmental Rules on Infrastructure,” The New York Times, Aug. 15, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y4kk2x9e.

[62] Erin Blakemore, “Doctors Warn That Climate Change Makes People Sick,” Smithsonian.com , March 16, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y5sbhsby; Watts et al., op. cit.

[63] Henry Fountain, “Scientists Link Hurricane Harvey's Record Rainfall to Climate Change,” The New York Times, Dec. 13, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y97pehuy.

[64] “Health Care Worldwide Calls for Action on Climate Change,” Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health, Nov. 14, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y2m4rjbg.

[65] Kristie L. Ebi et al., “Fourth National Climate Assessment, Vol. II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States, Chapter 14: Human Health,” U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y2fxpoq9.

[66] Emily Holden, “Trump on own administration's climate report: ‘I don't believe it,’” The Guardian, Nov. 26, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/s4yfbde; Coral Davenport and Mark Landler, “Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science,” The New York Times, May 27, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4cyllfv.

[67] Jeremy Deaton, “States Promised to Fulfill the Paris Agreement. Here's How They're Going to Do It,” NexusMedia, June 1, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yc6bszwx.

[68] Davenport, “Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040,” op. cit.

[69] Drew Kann, “Landmark UN report warns sea levels will rise faster than projected by 2100,” CNN, Sept. 25, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3tk8c4p.

[70] Ibid.; “Nauru President warns of possible climate change ‘economic Armageddon,’” U.N. News, Sept. 26, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yy4ey6fs.

[71] Megan Rowling, “12 global initiatives that could help us beat back climate threats,” Global Center on Adaptation, Sept. 26, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yyzppf2f.

[72] “WHO Director-General urges world leaders to protect health from climate change,” World Health Organization, Sept. 11, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4888r2c.

[73] Emma Tobin and Ivana Kottasová, “11,000 scientists warn of ‘untold suffering’ caused by climate change,” CNN, Nov. 6, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4facfm7.

[74] Vivian Ho et al., “Trump to block California from setting vehicle emissions rules,” The Guardian, Sept. 17, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3mex29j; Paul Eisenstein, “Trump axes California's right to set own auto emission standards,” NBC News, Sept. 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y65gsl9g.

[75] Scott Neuman, “Trump Says California's Ability To Set Its Own Emissions Standards Will Be Revoked,” NPR, Sept. 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y22unrqn.

[76] Coral Davenport, “California Sues the Trump Administration in Its Escalating War Over Auto Emissions,” The New York Times, Sept. 20, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/rmkzfzu.

[77] Brady Dennis, “Trump makes it official: U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate accord,” The Washington Post, Nov. 4, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y497dgr9.

[78] Salas, Knappenberger, and Hess, op. cit.; “About,” We Are Still In, https://tinyurl.com/y4d7mdfr.

[79] Olivia Rosane, “77 Health Organizations Call for Climate Action to Fight Public Health Emergency,” EcoWatch, June 25, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4t43u6p.

[80] Phil McKenna, “60% of Toxic Superfund Sites Threatened by Climate Change, GAO Finds,” Inside Climate News, Nov. 19, 2019,

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[81] Jason Beaubien, “A Month After Hurricane Dorian Hit The Bahamas, Recovery Is Slow And Uneven,” NPR, Oct. 2, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2qf3l6s; “WHO chief underscores need to address climate change following visit to Bahamas,” UN News, Oct. 2, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4pgjayq.

[82] “WHO chief underscores need to address climate change following visit to Bahamas,” ibid.

[83] Somini Sengupta, “Extreme Weather Displaced a Record 7 Million in First Half of 2019,” The New York Times, Sept. 12, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2cyrmne.

[84] Adele Peters, “Bill Gates and Ban Ki-moon: Investing in climate solutions could generate $7.1 trillion,” Fast Company, Sept. 10, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yy5t22jb; “Adapt Now: A Global Call for Leadership on Climate Resilience,” op. cit.

[85] “Adapt Now: A Global Call for Leadership on Climate Resilience,” ibid.

[86] “New Department Is Set to Assist Communities Affected by Climate Change,” KNBC, July 3, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6slrqm3.

[87] Eylul Tekin, “How Climate Change Will Impact Major Cities Across the U.S.,” Clever, Aug. 6, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y322b44b; Brentin Mock, “What U.S. Cities Facing Climate Disaster Risks Are Least Prepared?” CityLab, Aug. 19, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3vuyl87.

[88] Mock, ibid.; “Action on Global Warming: NYC's Green New Deal,” press release, New York City, April 22, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4sflsne.

[89] Davenport, “Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040,” op. cit.

[90] Stephen Leahy, “How to erase 100 years of carbon emissions? Plant trees — lots of them,” National Geographic, July 4, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y674uhqb.

About the Author Lola Butcher is a journalist who covers health care policy and business issues, trends and controversies. Her work has appeared in Undark, Knowable, Fast Company, TheAtlantic.com , Salon, Neurology Today, Managed Care and other publications. She is a member of the Association of Health Care Journalists and a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism.

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Introduction
Overview

Will climate change set off a global health catastrophe?
Should doctors take responsibility for educating the public about the health effects of climate change?
Is climate change causing or worsening mental health problems?

Background

Warming in the Dark
Health Connection Emerges
Calls for Action

Current Situation

United Nations and WHO
Trump Administration
Extreme Weather

Outlook

Threats to Multiply?

Pro/Con

Chronology
Short Features
Bibliography

Books
Articles
Reports and Studies

The Next Step

Doctors
Extreme Weather
Health Trends
Mental Health

Contacts
Footnotes
About the Author