When I was young, we all lived with a low-level, but constant, sense of anxiety about the possibility of a nuclear war, which could destroy civilization. While that source of anxiety has since been much reduced, with arms treaties and the end of the Cold War, we are now facing a new existential threat related to the multiple consequences of ongoing climate change. Already, our own NYU Langone Health was shut down for months by flooding from Superstorm Sandy, and our New York skies were darkened, along with an accompanying eerie orange sun and the smell of smoke, by wildfires in the Far West. I read in the newspapers disquieting accounts of the ice disappearing in the Arctic and the Antarctic, unprecedented floods and droughts around the world, and a massive ongoing extinction of animals and plants (both exotic and familiar), and I worry about what will happen to us all.
As a physician, I particularly worry about the many adverse health effects of the climate crisis. Direct harm results from trying to live and work in temperatures that are so high that our bodies are unable to adapt. Indirect effects include the increased spread of infectious disease by insect vectors and contaminated water, malnutrition due to crop failures, and increasing inhalation of harmful particulate matter. There will also be physical and psychological trauma due to both climate-induced catastrophic events and conflicts resulting from forced migrations as some regions become uninhabitable. As medical students, we were taught to try to prevent disease, rather than just focusing on treating its consequences, and yet now we are faced with a looming disaster that will undoubtedly become the most pressing medical issue of the 21st Century. As physicians, I believe that we have a responsibility to do what we can to address the many threats to health posed by climate change, just as we try to protect our patients’ health in more familiar medical contexts. Physicians are still viewed with a high level of trust by most people, and our warnings of the severe health risks of climate change will help raise public awareness of this issue. Medical students and residents could request that training on these issues be included in their curriculums, to help prepare them both to deal with these adverse effects when they occur, and to be more informed advocates for measures to reduce climate change.
While I feel powerless as an individual to do anything to avert this disaster, I am hopeful that we can work together to address it. In particular, I hope that awareness of the severity and wide-ranging nature of the adverse health effects of the climate crisis will enable us, as humans facing an imminent threat to all of our lives and well-being, to recognize and embrace our shared identity as “terrestrials”. This could help us to rise above our current focus on our own local group identities (and intergroup conflicts) and our concerns with maximizing short-term gains, in order to become willing to make the short-term sacrifices (such as reduced consumption of energy) that will be needed to save ourselves in the longer term. I just hope that such a shift in our collective sense of identity will come soon enough to avert large-scale harm to our health and to our planet.