‘We Don’t Have To Live This Way’: Doctors Call For Climate Action

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A Portland, Ore., resident wears a respirator to protect himself from wildfire smoke as he jogs in downtown in September 2020.

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Europe has experienced more intense and prolonged heat waves in recent years — heat that is particularly deadly for older people. In July, a heat wave struck Belgium, luring many to the beach in search of cooler temperatures.

Francisco Seco/AP

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Francisco Seco/AP

Europe has experienced more intense and prolonged heat waves in recent years — heat that is particularly deadly for older people. In July, a heat wave struck Belgium, luring many to the beach in search of cooler temperatures.

Francisco Seco/AP

Heat waves are especially deadly in the northern hemisphere, the authors note. In the U.S. the number of heat-related deaths in people over 65 has doubled in the last 20 years. Nearly 20,000 older people in the U.S. died in connection with heat waves last year.

Previous research has found, in addition, that people who work outside, poor people and student-athletes are all more likely to suffer from heat-related illnesses.

The Lancet analysis also finds that climate change is a threat to public health infrastructure such as hospitals, primary care facilities and emergency services. Two thirds of the more than 800 cities surveyed by researchers said that they expect climate change to «seriously compromise public health infrastructure the report notes.

The same survey found that more countries are providing climate and weather information to doctors and hospitals. In 2019, 86 countries said that they had connected their meteorological agencies with their public health agencies, compared to just 70 countries the year before.

Helping hospitals and doctors prepare for climate-driven disasters is increasingly important as concurrent disasters become more likely. Salas, who does research at Mass General on the intersection of health, health care and climate change, says the 2020 pandemic made clear how ill-equipped the public health apparatus is to handle major disasters.

She says the «cascading and far-reaching failures of the health system this year in the U.S. should be a wake-up call for the Biden-Harris administration to spend more money protecting health, especially in communities where poor people and minorities have been systematically and disproportionately exposed to pollution and denied adequate health care.

The Lancet report catalogues how air pollution from agriculture, vehicles and power plants contributes to asthma and other diseases that make severe cases of COVID-19 more likely.

«These are two tremendous disasters that are co-occurring in our nation as we speak, says Dr. Georges Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association.

Benjamin says the global economic recovery from the pandemic is an opportunity to adapt to climate change. «Climate change is an excellent example of severe inequity, he says.

For example, urban areas without green space are increasingly dangerous heat islands that trap hot air and pollution. Planting trees, reducing highway and industrial pollution and investing in new housing are all ways to address climate change and prevent premature death, he argues.

«It’s preventable, Benjamin says. «We don’t have to live this way.