The Public Health Crisis of Climate Change - Global Climate Day Event

September 29, 2023

Information

Physicians, public health professionals, and students from YCCCH, Medical Students for a Sustainable Future (MS4SF), and the Connecticut Health Professionals for Climate Action (CHPCA) joined for a conversation about personal reflections from the summer of 2023, the importance of addressing the impacts of climate change ahead of the 2023 UN Climate Ambition Summit in New York City, and where we go from here.

Speakers:

Dr. Sanjiv Godse, Yale New Haven Health, Connecticut Health Professionals for Climate Action
Alix Rachman, Yale Center on Climate Change and Health
Dr. Lauren Pischel, Yale School of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine
Matthew Andersen, Yale School of Medicine
Dr. Robert Dubrow, Yale Center on Climate Change and Health
Dr. Erica Frank, University of British Columbia, Physicians for Social Responsibility

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04:10And from a commonology and from a health care standpoint, we had no early warning systems. We had no means to alert our patients on that day to say don't go outside and use your inhalers.
04:21We were staring outside our windows just like everybody else, you know, it has to change.
04:27And when parents ask us for guidance on what to do when these wildfires came, You know, and honestly, like, what can you prescribe to somebody when the air is?
04:36Their breathing is hazardous. I mean, there's no medicine for that. The idea that these wildfires would reach our skies was previously unthinkable, but now it's just fact.
04:46Right, so we need to accept that this may not be the last wildfires smog we see in Connecticut.
04:51And we need to prepare for the next time because they're most likely will be. You know, the rest of the summer was marked by intense heat, intense flooding, and unpredictable weather, including this past week or 2 weeks ago.
04:58You know, and past reporters we were seeing endless heat waves in the American South, devastation in Maui in Greece and now Libya.
05:10And these are not isolated events, but these are symptoms of a much larger health problem. So we as medical professionals are trusted voices regarding the health impacts of climate change.
05:19And there's solid research to back that up. We cannot be passively watching these events unfold on TV.
05:27We need to fight for the health of our patients and our planet. We need to advocate so that we have, the progression of climate change.
05:34You know, we hear about extreme heat, extreme weather, but we don't what we don't hear about is the extreme use and reliance on fossil fuels.
05:43And you know, how can we continue to burn harmful fuels at the expense of convenience and profit?
05:49So we as a medical community have to fight back. And this is not something new. We've done it in the past.
05:50We fought against, we fought for the removal of lead and gasoline, which was commonplace until the late nineties.
05:59We fought for the removal of lead from paint. And we also fought big tobacco at home accountable.
06:04And frankly, it's time to fight back again. We need to push education in the space, educating ourselves, educating our patients, and most importantly, our legislators.
06:11We need to show that this is not a political agenda. This is a health crisis and it's happening right before our eyes.
06:21So just a quick plug. So for those of you who would like to join fellow health.
06:26Health care professionals in our state, please consider joining the Connecticut Health Professionals for Climate Action.
06:29We are the Connecticut branch of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, which is the national organization.
06:32And we're looking for more members to help push education, and we're looking for more members to help push education advocacy, and we're looking for more members to help push education advocacy, and action in the space.
06:45So please stick around. Thank you.
06:54Okay, so our next speaker is Alex Rekman, who's the program administrator for the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health.
07:08Hi everyone, I'm Alex. I've lived in California for my entire life. 2016 was the first year that I could no longer ignore the profound impact that climate change had on my community.
07:21The Soberian Aspire in Monterey County, a wildfire that burned 132,000 acres from July to October covered by car and ash every morning and had me waking up to a sky so gray that sometimes we couldn't see the sunlight for days.
07:35Life keeps moving even in the face of these disasters. While driving through Selenous Valley, I watched dozens of farm workers continue to work outdoors and the most hazardous air quality conditions.
07:42The county had ever experienced in order to feed the country. In 2018 the deadliest and most destructive wildfire season California has ever seen.
07:50I watched as the county fire in Napa. Forced my loved ones to pack up their belongings and only choose the most important items I could carry and evacuate their homes, not knowing if it would be standing when they were turned.
08:08This is a climate emergency and it needs to be declared as such. It's 2 23 and we're seeing history repeat itself over and over and over again in Maui in Canada and in so many other parts around the world.
08:20Every week it feels like you turn on the news and there's a new climate disaster like the floods that have killed hundreds of thousands of people in Libya.
08:27The science is clear. Of fossil fuels has increased the magnitude of wildfires, hurricanes, floods, and extreme heat, some of which we're seeing our own backyards.
08:38The impacts of climate change are deeply affecting the physical and mental health of those living in time-up hot spots around the world.
08:44Including heat related illnesses, vector-borne diseases, food and water insecurity, and population displacement.
08:50And black, indigenous, low income communities and communities of color are experiencing higher levels of these direct health effects from fossil fuel usage.
09:00For the first time, the UN Secretary General has outlined 5 critical actions to end fossil fuel exploration.
09:05Development and use and commit to building a resilient and just renewable energy future. These include one making renewable energy a public good.
09:162, improving global access to components and raw materials. 3, leveling the playing field for renewable energy technologies.
09:25For shifting energy subsidies from fossil fuels to renewable energy and 5 tripling the investments made in renewables.
09:32As physicians, students, and public health professionals, we need to come together and show our support to cut our dependence on fossil fuels and protect our community's health.
09:41Today we call them world leaders to take bold action and respond to Secretary General's ambition agenda during the UN climate ambition summit next week.
09:51It's time to stop fossil fuel corporations from destroying our health for profit. The march to end fossil fuels is leading the movement forward and these are our demands.
10:01Stop federal approvals for new fossil fuel projects like the Willow Project and the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
10:07Phase out fossil fuel drilling on our public lands and waters. Half fossil fuel exports and investments abroad and turbocharged the build out of adjust resilient distributed energy.
10:19And provide a just transition to renewable energy future that generates millions of jobs while supporting workers and community rights, job security and employment equity.
10:29Thank you.
10:38Alright, so our third speaker is Dr. Lauren. Michelle, she's an instructor of infectious diseases.
10:42She has a master's in epidemiology and she does research in emerging respiratory virus infections.
10:52And she also has a very strong interest in the interplay of infectious diseases and climate change.
11:02Thank you so much for having me. So I wanted to give a little bit of background and kind of knowledge about infectious disease.
11:03And kind of knowledge about infectious disease and climate change. And I think most of you are students.
11:06And kind of knowledge about infectious disease and climate change. And I think most of you are students.
11:07And I think most of you are students. So you probably know from a lot of your lectures that infectious disease is very detail oriented.
11:19It's the devil is really in the details. You can't necessarily generalize, but oh, this is happening with live disease. This is also going to happen with the plague.
11:27You have to know really those details. And that's also very true. That said, it is estimated that about half of all infectious diseases are going to change in some way related to climate change.
11:41Of those, 75% will increase in incidents in some way. With the remaining 25% changing their epidemiology, so changing their location or decreasing in epidemiology related to hotter conditions or weather conditions.
11:54Is by the IPCC. The things we really want to focus on and the diseases that will really change are vector born diseases, so tick-borne diseases or mosquito corn and also waterborne diseases, which makes sense.
12:05These are environmental pathogens. Thinking about tick-borne diseases, we are very well acquainted with that here in Connecticut, but we can see that the soy scopularist tick is expanding in its region and also with milder winters and warmer springs.
12:19You just have more ticks. There's a longer time when people can become infected. And this tickic sort of scopular.
12:25Transmits a ton of things, not only Lyme disease, but anaplasmosis, babesiosis, and then other ticks also are expanding their ranges.
12:34Thinking about mosquitoes, mosquitoes love warm and wet temperatures. So if you're having hotter temperatures in gender, you've greater in general you've greater heat capacity in the clouds so you have more rain so you then kind of larger say mosquito breathing.
12:45You need to have a very large dengue outbreaks in Southeast Asia while here in Connecticut we see potentially more and different arbor virus diseases.
12:57So a couple summers ago, yeah, a lot of triple E, we've not a lot, several cases of triple E, which is a lot.
13:02And then most recently this summer we have a Jamestown Canyon virus that has been found in 12 different towns not in people but in mosquitoes when they tested them which also causes a meningitis and encephalitis.
13:16Then moving on thinking about waterborne diseases, different bacteria really liked proliferate when it's warm.
13:22One we were talking about earlier, we're talking about earlier, which causes, especially when you've cuts on your hands, can cause an necrotizing skin top tissue infection, and specifically an even compromise people, but also an incompetent people could cause a really severe static shock and people can die from it, which has been reported.
13:35Because you have warmer ocean temperatures than this bacteria season can is longer and you're more likely to be at risk for infection for a longer period of time.
13:47Now, besides these 2 more direct areas, waterborne diseases and then. Tick Warner, Arthur Prideborne diseases, we can also think about more indirect waste infectious diseases can be impacted by climate change.
13:58So few of these really extreme weather events like people being displaced from the homes by fires or like in Libya, then you also have people in refugee camps or clustered together in ways they weren't classroom before.
14:08So you can have different infectious these outbreaks in these displaced persons populations. We also really have to think about if animals are changing their effort where they live where they can live related to climate then that will push animals to have different interactions with humans and push them more so to interact in different ways with us.
14:25Allowing for different spillover and spill back of pathogens. Spillover is where there's a, say, a zoo anotic infection that comes into humans and spill back is when we give something back to them.
14:38And we've all just lived through one pandemic or living through it still. And then we really want to try and decrease this ability, this these outbreaks from happening.
14:48But the overall should not despair. There is still time for action. Things to think about that we should do specifically regarding to infectious disease is that we want to have better infectious disease surveillance, better health care capacity for these big.
15:02Stresses that we put on the system in addition to different climate mitigation and adaptation and reducing fossil fuels.
15:10Thank you guys. Happy to talk more about it.
15:19Okay, so our next speaker is Matt Anderson, who's a second year medical student. And he's also a leader of Yale's medical students for a sustainable future.
15:36Hi everyone. I want to take a moment to thank you all for coming here to acknowledge the threat of climate change and want to express gratitude to Dr.
15:42Erica Frank for inspiring this event. And to my colleagues at the Yale New Haven Hospital and the School of Public Health to help me organize this.
15:54So I'm here to represent the perspective of medical students. I see a lot of medical students here, so you're probably familiar with my perspectives.
15:59But in general, I'm very fortunate to be part of a community where my peers are passionate about addressing the climate crisis and who are motivated to make a difference.
16:07But we're also deeply concerned. Anxious and unprepared to deal with the significant public health impacts of the climate crisis that these doctors have just Our institution has only just begun to educate us on the health effects of climate change and the progress that's been made thus far has been championed through the dedication of very few faculty members and many busy medical students dedicated to improving our curriculum.
16:37The immediate reaction of many students, to this curriculum has been skepticism asking, what can we do with this information?
16:44We're not yet doctors treating patients and we lack the authority to allocate resources to address climate trends.
16:50Moreover, our training exposes us to numerous moral and ethical issues, making it easy for the climate crisis to be overshadowed.
16:58However, I believe that medical students and especially those at this generation have crucial roles to play. Let me share 2 examples.
17:06First, as students, we can influence our educators to prepare for the challenges posed by climate trends.
17:07Our renowned institution is a hub of clinical expertise and can set the standard for cleaner jet future generations of clinicians to come.
17:20If our aim is to shift values and norms regarding climate threats, we are uniquely positioned. With the ability to make incremental but indelible improvements in the education of clinicians to come.
17:32This is the current goal of MS 4 SFA. Yeah. Over the past 2 years, we have been working, to impact our education to teach our peers about the health effects of climate change.
17:42While it's only a fraction of our education, we hope it sparks an awareness that something is seriously wrong on a large scale.
17:47And that it inspires further exploration and action. Second, as medical students, we must be prepared to bring our change to our future practice.
17:59My peers and I inherit a rich academic lineage. But along with it, the shortcomings of a system that was built in a world that no longer exists.
18:07It's a system that is not prioritized equity. Resource stewardship or patient empowerment.
18:12Well, my peers and I will remain students for many, many years. We will soon be part of emergency departments operating rooms, private practices, and community clinics across the country.
18:24We will have the power to treat and inform our patients. Our actions will directly impact the sustainability of our system, whether it's the use of different anesthetic gases or the selection of our electricity providers and we'll be able to influence health system leaders through advocacy and research.
18:41Health care is more complex than ever, but by staying informed on crucial issues and by identifying ways to improve our practices, we can drive real change.
18:50Being a competent physician requires understanding the context and what your patients live, play, learn, and work.
18:56The ways in which our environments are impacted by the climate crisis as a salient component of that context.
19:02I'm proud that my peers and I are advocating for and equipping ourselves with necessary tools to address these challenges.
19:08Thank you.
19:23Okay, so now I'll say a few words and then We'll leave leave our.
19:29Start speaker for less.
19:32So you've been hearing about how Climate change really represents a public health crisis and a major, if not the major public health challenge of the 20 first century.
19:46What I want to emphasize. Is that, well, and that we have to. You know, the solution, of course, is to, convert from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
19:57Where we have to stop burning fossil fuels. Well, I want to emphasize is that even if climate change were not happening, that converting from fossil fuels to renewable energy would still be a public health triumph.
20:11Okay, and the reason is that when we burn fossil fuels, we of course emit carbon dioxide, which is the greenhouse gas that's causing all this trouble.
20:21We also amid. Toxic air colludence like find particulate matter. Like nitrogen oxides, like precursors of ground level ozone.
20:32And this is something you all should be aware of if you're not already. Fine, the estimates are that.
20:39Fine particulate matter alone. Kills between 5 and 10 million people per year globally. Okay, so it's a major killer in the world.
20:49And so if we eliminated fossil fuel burning, which would greatly reduce fine particulate matter in the atmosphere.
20:57We'd save millions of lives. And that's an immediate benefit. Right, so the We do, we absolutely have to reduce fossil fuels and eliminate fossil fuels in order to address climate change.
21:10But that's going to happen kind of over a longer period of time. I mean, even if we, even if we stop burning all those fuels tomorrow.
21:22We still have a certain amount of climate change baked in, so temperatures are going to continue to increase, which means that the health effects would continue to get worse.
21:31But we have the silver lining. Major silver lining that we have the immediate health benefits of saving millions of lives.
21:40So. Next point I want to make is that the demand to end up fossil fuels is not a radical demand.
21:50So first I wanted to point to a 2021 report. By the International Energy Agency, which is a very mainstream organization.
21:59And they concluded that in the quote There is no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply. Okay, so no new fossil fuels.
22:09And then I'd like to combine that with with something that the 20 was concluded by the intergovernmental.
22:19Panel on climate change, which is another very mainstream organization in their 2,023 synthesis report.
22:25That emissions of carbon dioxide over the lifetime of existing fossil fuel infrastructure alone. Will lead to warming of greater than 1.5 degrees centigrade, which is the goal of the Paris climate agreement.
22:41So just what we have now is a big problem, right? If we if we just allow all of that.
22:48You know, if we don't in some of the current infrastructure early, we have, we're gonna overshoot that 1.5 degree goal.
22:56Let alone think about what's going to happen if we continue to build out fossil fuels, which is currently what's going on.
23:03Okay, so it's not a radical demand, but it's a very urgent demand. Finally, what's actually happening in the United States?
23:13So the inflict inflation reduction act is really a tremendous step forward for. Renewable energy.
23:20However, the Biden administration is kind of taking 2 tracks here. They approve, for example, this big Mountain Valley pipeline project, which is major fossil fuel infrastructure.
23:33They approved the Willow project, which is for oil drilling in Alaska, another major project. So in effect what they're doing is what you might call an all of the above.
23:45All of the above energy strategy, which really is not what we need right now. So This strategy is unnecessary according to the International Energy Agency we don't have we don't need to build out more fossil fuel It's dangerous, obviously.
24:05And it's also a threat. Terms of what we're thinking about. A major threat to public health.
24:11So really. Fossil, we need to end fossil fuels. It has to stop.
24:19So.
24:24Okay, so now for our final speaker, it's a visitor, Dr. Erica Frank.
24:30Who is a MD and MPH. What's it? Okay, preventive medicine, that's great.
24:41And she's also, and alumnus of, Yale Medical School.
24:47Right. Yeah.
24:51Alright. She's currently a professor at the University of British Columbia. She's a past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and she's also the steward's for social responsibility and she's also the steward.
25:05This is great of the 1,985 Nobel Peace Prize for the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War Canada.
25:12So.
25:18Okay. So.
25:24Well, I have this object. But I'm, here I think mainly in the next 5 min to role model how a life while at and after Yale can be really powerful even in the context of wearing a dock hat or public health head or public health head or public health head or another health provider public health head or another health provider.
25:50So, I've always been interested in, advocacy and in social change. And there are 3.
25:58Major academic policies that I have done that might be useful for you guys to know about. First though to tell you I was not flown in as a ringer, okay?
26:10That is, that would be really terrible. And in fact, the piece that I want to really make sure that you see and hopefully remember perennially.
26:16So what I'm telling you is this graph. Start a website called visualcarbon.org.
26:27And this is climate change one flight round trick for the black. common class, round trip in grade bars or first class from Vancouver to any of these places in comparison with this line.
26:39For carbon emissions that are sustainable. And 2 degrees. Increased. In our environment.
26:53And these bars are the average conditions for people in these different countries. And these bars are the average conditions for people in these different countries.
27:02So bottom line this. From here, going on to Boston and then to Germany. And so I am going to have the carbon footprint of this trip to Berlin at the economy level.
27:13But I'm gone from Vancouver until probably it's better because I'm doing this small.
27:23Because I'm having this huge carbon expenditure and I have other things I am meeting in Africa and and so rather than going back to Vancouver, I catch surfing with my best friend.
27:42With Karen and his husband for this week and. Of course, since I was gonna be here and today is the global climate strike day, I was like, Well, we must do something and so contacted a mutual friend who I've known since I did my fellowship at Stanford and here we are.
28:02So the other 2 things that I wanna. Then the other 3 things that I want to mention briefly to is that All the flight piece.
28:11I got the Board of Governors of University British Columbia where I'm a pro. To agree to a policy to reduce work related travel air travel by 50% by 2,030 compared to prior to pandemic.
28:29So, major change based on that piece of data, that graph that was like, this is the biggest thing by far than any of us.
28:38Travel by air, 10% or so, the goal is ever travel by air. And the 2 to 3%, you do so over here.
28:48We, this is a place where our personal decision-making and our influence on what's normative for our peers about travelling to a conference.
28:59To hear that there's somebody. They're like not acting on what they want to what they say we should all do.
29:10This is the place where our personal action and how to influence our ecosystem can make a difference.
29:16The other place where I need a meaningful academic difference. It's in 2 pension bucks. And before that, at TIAA, which is where all US academicians have the opportunity to put our funds.
29:34And when I went to, as faculty in 1993. There was a social choice bar and I put all my money into that with TAA.
29:44But they're about 7 years so I realized it was an awful lot of serious carbon and there's in that social choice stuff.
29:53So made an appointment with some other leaders from physicians for social responsibility and went to New York when I was going to be there anyway to their headquarters and a year later, Ti, now with the low carbon.
30:08Social and screening fund that had all the original social screeners plus the little carbon. It's not like a perfect one by me.
30:18So he now has over. Yeah. Of pension plans. And that was like, they probably happened soonish anyway, but the fact that it happened 4 years ago was a hundred percent because I said and I did the same thing in Conversely, obviously the smaller effect.
30:39No, we need to have an opportunity to be able Just put our money for our mouths. So those are things that I as followers here are problems with the power of applying education and credentials was able to, and just to include.
31:00This Nobel Prize is the same sort of function. So this is This is the one that was cast so that you may need.
31:13And I'm on the board of now. I was president of the American anxious. And this was in in acknowledgment, which was thought at the time to be intractable and still is.
31:29But, this is testing. We know any, individuals who need social change. And that's what we're all about today.
31:34So really, a chance to interact.
31:54Thanks for coming. That's I said at the beginning. No, we've been scheduled a decision short event so feel free to leave but anyone I think probably a lot of us could stay a little longer if you wanna.