Climate change as a public health issue

Climate change as a public health issue

Climate change is a big threat to public health today. Climate change has been able to affect humans through several social, cultural and natural ways (The Lancet, 391(10120), 581-630.

. Its effects comes in tow differently ways; firstly, it can increase the occurrence of health problems that are already affected by climate or by weather factors, for instance extreme heat, skin diseases and secondly, its can result into unexpected health threats in areas where they have never occurred before for example; rise of storm and flooding.

Certain groups of people are likely to be affected in great ways than others. Climate change challenges may have great impacts on people who live in places that are vulnerable to coastal storms, seal level rise and drought (Sazvar, Z., Rahmani, M., & Govindan, K. (2018). People who are living in poverty, aging adults, and immigrant populations have limited resources to cope up with changes. Due to their limited funds they are unable to relocate or evacuate in case of any a climate change complication. They are unable to shift easily with the change that climate may bring. Likewise, there are specific industries and professions that are greatly affected than others. For instance careers that are directly linked to climate such as tourism, agriculture and commerce among others.

There are several solution that when adopted they may help in curbing climate change and reduce the effects and some of these solutions include;

• Discourage cutting of trees- activities of timber harvest are said to amount to the largest amount of carbon in the atmosphere. While improved agricultural activities, recycling of paper and management of forests and balancing of trees cut down with the trees planted can help to reduce the huge chunk of carbon emissions.
• Stay close to workplace- transportation is a top leading source of greenhouse gas emission in the United States. If people relocate to their work place, use public transportation means, switch to cycling or walking can bring positive effects in climate change.
• Doctors, health workers and nurses can help by focusing more on pollution than prescriptions and other minor concerns of climate change
• Students in medical schools and those in schools of public health should consider joining public healthProtection Agency and help in solving environmental problems that bring about climate change.
• Upgrading infrastructure- buildings majorly contribute in the gas emission but opting for upgraded and new infrastructure or looking on upgrading existing highways and transmission lines, could help cut greenhouse gas emissions.
• Forego Fossil Fuels— people literally depend on the products that are manufactured using fossils fuels in order to work, get something to eat, wear and even play. Therefore, eliminating the use of these fuels is a great challenge to put behind but a good start to reducing burning of coal, oil and natural gas. However there are is no any perfect way to stop dependence of these fossil fuels because carbon neutral can be very expensive and result to increase of other essentials like food price.
• Be Efficient—a great change can be impacted if people did more with less .Citizens living in developed countries waste a lot of energy by over using electricity, leaving their lights on when they not even using it.

• Good driving— taking time to ensure that cars are well maintained and their tires well inflated reduces the amount of gas emissions that would have happened if that wasn’t done.
• Likewise, use of more efficient refrigerators, air conditioners and other house appliances, for instance those that are rated under the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program, can drop down bills brought by electricity usage. And something like weatherproofing the windows we use at home could limit heating and cooling bills.

The best solution to climate change is by solving carbon pollution and making carbon expensive. The less the carbon pollution the less the climate change. The government can help by impacting a higher price on carbon fossil fuels like oil and coal. This will help a wide range of people to opt for other alternatives of energy forms and probably carbon free sources like wind and solar. The government can as well carry on environmental campaigns to educate against carbon pollution and urge people to help in stopping it and therefore reducing emission of poisonous gases in the atmosphere which in turn will reduce global warming and greenhouse effects.

Based on the environmental group online tool, (Moulton, A. D. 2018). Legal the United States funding bill of climate change solution amounts to $634 billion owed to developing countries. According to Jubilee South Asia Pacific movement development, Stockholm Environmental institute and tribute of Earth, US should also cut carbon emission from 65% to 55%.