Climate Change is Increasingly Threatening Public Health

The Supreme Court should affirm that the EPA is responsible for responding to this growing crisis.

Just as New evidenceAccording to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there is a significant health impact already due to climate change. The U.S. Supreme Court has begun to consider a case. West Virginia v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, that could have far-reaching repercussions on our country’s response to the climate crisis. It’s been over a decade since the court took on another key climate change case – Massachusetts v. EPA – and determined in 2007 that the Clean Air Act authorizes EPA to regulate carbon dioxide and other heat trapping greenhouse gases as air pollutants. Although it sounds rather academic, it was a profound, prescient decision that helped to connect the dots between climate pollutants and their eventual consequences for human health.

Back in 2007, there were already hundreds of scientific studies that linked carbon pollution to climate change, and further connected global warming of our atmosphere and oceans to a wide range of environmental changes that could harm people’s health. Thousands of people have died from the effects of climate change fifteen years later. AdditionalThese risks are even more clearly demonstrated by scientific studies. Climate change is a daily reality for many people. Millions of people. It’s not just about book-learning anymore. Climate change is a problem that affects many people. There are many ways to do it.Without equitable policy responses, our most vulnerable will suffer more than others.

Climate Hazards Are Undeniable

The last decade has brought climate change into our homes, backyards, and doctor’s Exam rooms. Among the members of National Medical Association86% of physicians who were surveyed felt that climate change was relevant to patient care. The years 2013-2021 were all included in the list. Ten of the warmest years ever recorded globally. Americans have lived lately through a nasty, sometimes lethal array of climate change-fueled extremes: a “megadrought” in the American West that scientists estimate to be the worst in Minimum 1,200 years, historic heat waves like the 2021 Pacific Northwest “heat dome”, the unprecedented western wildfire seasons in 2020 and 2021, historic storms and deadly flooding from mega-systems like Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Ida, spikes in vector-borne diseases and the emergence of new diseases, and longer seasons in which pollen and air pollution make breathing difficult for tens of millions of Americans with allergies, asthma, and other pre-existing conditions.

Preventing Grim Weather from Become a Reality

If the climate problem is not addressed, it will continue to threaten our health and well-being. Alarming statistics were revealed this month. Scientific assessment from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecast that sea level rise in the U.S. is accelerating, with an additional foot of sea level rise anticipated by 2050 (the same increase previously took an entire century). The country’s air quality is being monitored. Severely impairedBoth wildfire smoke, and ozone smog. A hotter planet makes these problems even more severe Even It is more difficult to address.  Heat-related Hospitalizations and deaths are also expected to climb in the absence of meaningful policies that cut climate pollution. While health experts continue to uncover new evidence on the links between rapid climate change and human health risks, we have plenty of data and robust scientific consensus to justify strong actions to address the root of our climate ills.

A Costly Burden, Heavily Shouldered by Vulnerable People

These worsening climate hazards cost people not only in human pain and terrible suffering, disrupting lives, work, schools, and communities: these physical harms also threaten mental well-being and impose significant economic costs as well. We took a look at the health-related costs of a set of climate-sensitive events that were documented in just one year since the 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA case – the year 2012– and estimated $10 billion in health-related costs. The financial burden of health-related climate damages goes largely untallied and under-appreciated. That staggering price tag stems from more than 900 Deaths, 20,000 hospitalizations, and 17,000 emergency department visits from a small sample of climate-sensitive events in just a single year. Experts at NOAA have been tracking the financial wreckage of climate and weather disasters since 1980, and their accounting indicates that 2010-19 decade was one of “unprecedented” harm, as the country suffered twice the number of billion dollar disasters than during the decade prior.

Federal Action Is Urgent

Climate change increasingly endangers the health and well-being of the entire country (and indeed the world), so it’s crucial that the EPA—established to safeguard human health and environmental quality—be allowed to continue and expand its work to protect Americans in the face of this unprecedented, menacing threat. Actions EPA has taken over the past year—phasing down the use of climate super-pollutants, cutting climate pollution from the transport sector, and reducing emissions from oil and gas extraction operations–make it clear that EPA not only has the authority, but also the know-how to implement health-protective climate policies that can deliver both near-term air quality and public health gains as well as longer-term progress towards our country’s ambitious goal to drastically cut climate pollution during this pivotal decade.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2007 decision finding that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act, and EPA’s subsequent endangerment finding in 2009 documenting the tangible human risks linked to the worsening climate problem, reflect the overwhelming scientific Evidence on the causes and consequences of climate change for our country. Now is the moment to strengthen EPA’s climate work, not sideline it.