Climate change harms everyone’s health. Yes, even yours.
[Massive]
Renee Salas, Emergency Medicine
Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University
There is consensus among experts that climate change is happening – and that it is playing a role in multiplying negative health impacts across the globe. These could exponentially increase as we approach the environmental tipping point scientists have warned us about.
However, a recent survey revealed that while the majority of Americans believe that climate change is causing harm, most do not believe that it is affecting them personally. They’re wrong: climate change is already affecting all of us through negative impacts on our health independent of age, health status, socioeconomic class, or geographic location. Our personal health is intrinsically tied to the health of this planet, and the planet has a breathing problem.
For humans, breathing is the act of taking in oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide. Adults do it an average of about 16 times a minute. In complementary symmetry, our planet has a “breathing” cycle that works in the exact opposite way: plants on land and plankton in water take in carbon dioxide and release our life-sustaining oxygen.
