Climate Change and Human Health: It’s a Killer

By: Patricia Salber MD, MBA (@docweighsin)

The impact of climate change on human health is killing people right now via extreme weather events, spread of infectious disease, and failures of nutrition.

Despite what Donald Trump says, climate change is real and it is related to human activities. It is also killing us NOW. Even though he buried his own administration’s climate change report because he didn’t like the findings, all of the rest of us can look around and see what is happening:

I could go on and on, but what I really want to focus on in this story is the evidence that health consequences to us humans are not something that may happen in 2050 — they are already happening now. Here is a summary of what we know based on what I learned at the February 2017 Climate Change and Health Conference.

Related story: Enviromedics: How Climate Change is Killing Us Now

The Climate Change and Health Conference

The Climate Change and Health conference was held at the Carter Center in Atlanta in 2017. It hosted by former Vice President Al Gore and the American Public Health Association.

The goal of the conference was to lay out the scientific evidence that directly links climate change to adverse health events, such as infectious diseases, heat-related deaths, increases in asthma and allergies, and much, much more. The main takeaway of the conference was that the impact of climate change is not just bad weather, melting polar ice caps, and increases in sea level, rather,

it is clear that the environmental consequences of climate change are killing humans right now.

This is a Goldilocks planet

Former Vice President Al Gore opened his keynote address at the conference by reminding us what the late Carl Sagan said about our planet:

“This is a Goldilocks planet, not too hot like Venus, not too cold like Mars, but just right.”

He went on to say “Now that human beings have become the most powerful force of nature in affecting planetary conditions, we are pushing many people outside of the…