Why the Climate Crisis is also a Health Crisis

Teach the Future is an organization built by students to empower students, so today I would like to talk from a student perspective, as well as a climate activists' perspective.

As a 17-year-old student, I am facing the daunting task of deciding what I want to do with my life, whether it be apprenticeships, university or any other path. Currently, I am working towards studying medicine and planning my personal statement is taking over my life. How am I going to link my passion and absolute belief in climate action, education, and justice, to my interest in medicine? It got me thinking about the lack of accessible information open to the public about the crossover between the climate crisis and health.

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Eco Anxiety

A global study found that 45% of the 10,000 young people surveyed across 10 countries said that eco-anxiety was affecting their daily lives and ability to function. This may be a result of firsthand experience of climate-change-enhanced natural disasters or the endless nihilistic news reports on global events spread across the media. Although it is essential to be well informed, it is also important for there to be light shed on steps towards the solution to these consequences of humankind-enhanced climate change. Emotion is a powerful tool for persuasion and real action, but can be manipulated for the wrong reasons, for clicks and views instead of the aim to make a positive change. Mental health facilities also have a long way to go in terms of their capability to support youth or anybody suffering from eco-anxiety. From my own personal experience of an eco-anxiety induced eating disorder, the clinical staff at my treatment center had almost no clue how to respond or help me through my disorder as they were used to body-image or other more stereotypical contributors to eating disorders.  

Respiratory diseases

Three surveys from different medical societies from 2014 and 2015 found that 57 percent of surveyed physicians believed their patients’ health was already being affected by climate change through injuries due to storms. Another 45 percent felt climate change had affected their patients through changing heat, and 40 percent through vector-borne infections. The multi-faceted consequences of climate change disrupting our environment continue to disrupt our health.

The C-word

Although the link between Covid-19 and climate change is less clear compared to other diseases such as malaria, it is still important to identify links.

For example, the fact that all health shocks, sometimes direct results of environmental disasters, hit the poorest and the most vulnerable the hardest. They act as poverty multipliers, forcing families into extreme poverty because they must pay for health care. At least half of the world’s population does not enjoy full coverage for the most basic health services. When health disasters hit – and in a business-as-usual scenario they will do so increasingly – global inequality is sustained, reinforced, and paid for with the lives of the poor and marginalized.

One lesson we can draw from the COVID-19 pandemic and how it relates to climate change is that well-resourced, equitable health systems with a strong and supported health workforce are essential to protect us from health security threats, including climate change. The austerity measures that have strained many national health systems over the past decade will have to be reversed if economies and societies are to be resilient and prosperous in an age of change... both positive and negative.

Although it may seem as though I have listed a bunch of things to keep you up at night and potentially feed into your eco-anxiety, that is not the message I hope that you get from this. Although this is the current state of things, many research centers around the world have  world-class scientists studying past events, identifying and managing current problems, as well as predicting and preventing future developments. It is our role as activists and young people to ensure that those in institutional power support these ventures as much as possible. This can be done at any platform, be it social media, school or writing to your local MP. For more ways to see how you can contribute to a political action and awareness of climate change please see this page on our website.

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