We teach our children to treat others as they want to be treated, but what about the world around them?
We teach our children to treat others as they want to be treated, but what about the world around them? As the dominant force driving ecological change, the damage we do to natural life-support systems is eventually visited upon us, perhaps most dramatically in our health. Stanford researchers are exploring how climate change fueled by human-caused emissions is altering the burden of disease, hunger, thirst and mental illness around the world. Their sobering discoveries open a window into understanding, predicting and mitigating these changes.
“The next great health threat has already emerged,” said Paul Auerbach, a professor emeritus of emergency medicine and co-author of the book Enviromedics: The Impact of Climate Change on Human Health. “It’s climate change.”
Climate change’s health impacts are and will be broad. Related drivers such as extreme weather and sea level rise are already contributing to a range of ills from outbreaks of waterborne disease and heat-related illness to respiratory allergies and asthma. Scientists are increasingly able to connect climate change to events such as civil conflict and forced migration that result in injury, mental illness and death on a large scale. The youngest, oldest and poorest among us stand to lose the most.
Read more at Stanford University
