Abstract
Climate change–driven health impacts are serious, widespread, and costly. Importantly, such damages are largely absent from policy debates around the costs of delay and inaction on this crisis. While climate change is a global problem, its impacts are localized and personal, and there is growing demand for specific information on how climate change affects human health in different places. Existing research indicates that climate-fueled health problems are growing, and that investments in reducing carbon pollution and improving community resilience could help to avoid tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in climate-sensitive health impacts across the USA each year, including those stemming from extreme heat, air pollution, hurricanes, and wildfires. Science that explores the underappreciated local health impacts and health-related costs of climate change can enhance advocacy by demonstrating the need to both address the root causes of climate change and enhance climate resilience in vulnerable communities. The climate crisis has historically been predominantly conceived as a global environmental challenge; examination of climate impacts on public health enables researchers to localize this urgent problem for members of the public and policymakers. In turn, approaches to climate science that focus on health can make dangerous climate impacts and the need for cost-effective solutions more salient and tangible.
Highlights
The climate crisis is often presented as an Earth system problem because increasing concentrations of greenhouse gasses are contributing to rising sea levels, increasing globalThis article is part of a topical collection on “Critical and historical perspectives on usable climate science,” edited by Deborah R
Existing research indicates that climate-fueled health impacts are growing in severity and reach, and that investments in reducing carbon pollution and improving community resilience could help to avoid thousands of premature deaths and hospitalizations and tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in climate-sensitive health impacts across the USA each year, including those stemming from extreme heat, drought, air pollution, hurricanes, severe storms, and wildfires (Jay et al 2018; Limaye et al 2019)
While international and national assessments of climate change, such as those produced by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the US Global Change Research Program, are focused on describing broad climate mechanisms, risks, and trends, this information is of limited value to people seeking to understand what climate change could mean for them and their local communities
Summary
The climate crisis is often presented as an Earth system problem because increasing concentrations of greenhouse gasses are contributing to rising sea levels, increasing global. This article is part of a topical collection on “Critical and historical perspectives on usable climate science,” edited by Deborah R.
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