The COVID-19 pandemic has proven that extraordinary public health measures can pivot every aspect of society. Norms, politics, economics, and business practices rapidly responded to coordinated simultaneous policies worldwide. This begs the question of why such advancements have not yet been similarly executed to reduce the short- and long-term morbidity and mortality due to environmental destruction and climate change. This article reviews various reasons explaining the discrepancy between the policies of these two health threats, using a terror management theory lens. Exploring how anthropogenic climate change potentiated the contagion and outcomes of COVID-19, the environmental determinants of health deserve increased attention in public discourse. The industry-driven response to COVID-19 also has exacerbated preexisting health inequalities and vulnerabilities, suggesting that a just transition for climate change must not repeat some of the same mistakes taken in global pandemic measures. Finally, addressing emergency health harms in ways that create increased environmental health harms is deemed iatrogenic, displacing rather than truly treating disease. Thus, a planetary health model focused on multisolving health issues is recommended for the basis of addressing COVID-19 and other health disasters.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joclim.2022.100152 | DOI Listing |
BMC Public Health
January 2025
Heluna Health, City of Industry, City of Industry, CA, USA.
Background: Prescribed burning is an important fuel management tool to prevent severe wildfires. There is a pressing need to increase its application to reduce dry fuels in the western United States, a region that has experienced many damaging wildfires. Public support for this practice is tempered by concern around smoke impacts and escape risks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Public Health
January 2025
Department of Population Health Sciences, School of Life Course & Population Sciences, King's College London, Franklin-Wilkins Building, Stamford Street London, SE1 9NH, UK.
Background: Climate change has severe health impacts, particularly for populations living in environmentally sensitive areas such as riversides, slopes, and forests. These challenges are exacerbated for Indigenous communities, who often face marginalisation and rely heavily on the land for their livelihoods. Despite their vulnerability, the perspectives of Indigenous populations on climate change and its impacts remain underexplored, creating a critical gap in the literature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Food
January 2025
Biosphere Sciences and Engineering, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA, USA.
Climate change poses substantial challenges to agriculture and crop production, but the combined role of nitrogen and water inputs in adaptation has been largely overlooked. Here, by developing regression models using US county-level data (2008-2020), we demonstrate that integrated optimization of irrigation and nitrogen inputs represents the most resource-efficient strategy to offset the climate-related yield losses. Under the 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
Department of Physics and Mathematics, University of Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Spain.
Since 1999, every report released by the International Panel on Climate Change has advocated a decrease in the greenhouse gas emissions associated with aviation in order to preserve the current climate. This study used a two variable differential equations model with a non-linear control term to address several aspects of the emissions stabilization issue. By optimizing the control term parameter, several management alternatives can be obtained based on the properties of the phase plane of the model solutions, as identified by a stability analysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), Alfred-Kowalke-Str. 17, 10315, Berlin, Germany.
Wind turbines used to combat climate change pose a green-green dilemma when endangered and protected wildlife species are killed by collisions with rotating blades. Here, we investigated the geographic origin of bats killed by wind turbines along an east-west transect in France to determine the spatial extent of this conflict in Western Europe. We analysed stable hydrogen isotopes in the fur keratin of 60 common noctule bats (Nyctalus noctula) killed by wind turbines during summer migration in four regions of France to predict their geographic origin using models based on precipitation isoscapes.
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