Why planetary health?

(see also Introduction to Planetary Health)

Planetary health is concerned with environmental threats to human health. Planetary health has deep roots in ecology and public health. It is big picture thinking about environmental systems, how we disrupt them, and how that impacts our health.

As the term “planetary health” is generally used, it is less about individual actions or what clinicians on the front line need to know than what policymakers and public health officials do. We are taking the uninvited poetic liberty of expanding the use of the term.

What we as individuals think, care about, and do becomes part of the big picture and can make a difference. As it says in the subtitle to Myers’ and Frumkin’s book on planetary health: “protecting nature to protect ourselves” (see bibliography).

That is not just for the professionals, that is for all of us!

This is a call to action, a recognition that we have the tools to intervene, if we have the vision and the will. We can only survive and thrive if Earth’s biosphere (the web of life) does, and we need to act now to stop the worst from happening.

This website is a gateway to planetary health action for all!

Perhaps you care more about an ‘ecocentric’ approach: preserving ecosystems and species for their own sake, rather than for their value to humans. Whether or not a planetary health perspective is your cup of tea, there is material here that could be helpful.

You might ask: Why should I even try?

Isn’t it too late?

NO! It’s not too late.

Although…

It is too late for human life to be as we once knew it, at least for centuries to come. It is too late to prevent all the negative impacts; after all, they are already happening. But it is not too late to act and prevent the worst outcomes!

It is not too late to create the cleaner, healthier world we want to live in.

Hope

The hope is that we can slow the processes of climate change and environmental degradation, build resilience, and find joy and satisfaction in doing so.

We must not give up, we must not despair. We can’t just let the special interests, fear and greed rule the day.

We can stem the tide, we can avoid the worst-case scenarios, if we do better.

But it isn’t just about avoiding calamity, as important as that is.

Taking action can lead to new ways of doing things, a cleaner, more just and prosperous future. It is about surviving, but it is also about Thriving.

First we must change the course we are on.

We owe it to ourselves and to all those we care about.

There is room for hope, it is not just wishful thinking; the times they are a-changin’!

The end of 2022 was a time for news about progress the likes of which “has never happened before.”  As detailed in News section posts for the Fall of 2022:

• $369 billion were set aside to fight climate change in the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States.

• The agreement at the COP27 meeting to have a Loss and Damage Fund with monies from wealthy nations (that tend to have the largest carbon footprint) to be used to help less-wealthy nations (that tend to have the smallest carbon footprint) with the suffering and losses incurred from climate change. Two hundred nations signed on.

• Positive change is happening faster than was expected just a year ago. In December 2022 the International Energy Association (IAE) predicted that the global capacity of electricity that will be available in the next 5 years will be almost a third more than what they predicted in 2021, with over 90% of this new capacity being from renewable sources, mostly solar and wind. Electricity from renewable energy will surpass coal globally by early 2025.

• The European Union joined the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution and legislation to curb plastic pollution has been introduced in the United States Congress.

For healthcare professionals

This site is not geared specifically for health professionals; however, there are sections and links that will be of particular interest to health professionals, for example, the clinician’s corner. Other sections will highlight aspects that are of use to medical professionals, like the subsection on making presentations in communication and presentations.

Healthcare professionals signed on to decrease suffering by attending to healthcare concerns; it is what we do. Planetary health is a larger perspective, an extension, of what we usually think of as health care.

1. Americans believe that protecting personal and public health is of primary importance when addressing climate change, and health professionals are trusted by an increasing majority on these issues. EcoAmerica - American Climate Perspectives Survey 2021