It’s been a long while that scientists, doctors, other experts have warned us that a warming planet will probably increase the public health issues that come with hotter temperatures, more extreme weather, and disease carriers that can survive longer in what used to be colder regions.

Studies that have taken the time and expertise to tease out this probable connection between Climate Change and more public health issues are getting more strident.

Climate change fueling disasters, disease in ‘potentially irreversible’ ways, report warns Climate change significantly imperils public health globally, according to a new report that chronicles the many hazards and symptoms already being seen. The authors describe its manifestations as “unequivocal and potentially irreversible.” Heat waves are striking more people, disease-carrying mosquitoes are spreading and weather disasters are becoming more common, the authors note in the report published Monday by the British medical journal the Lancet. Climate change is a “threat multiplier,” they write, and its blows hit hardest in the most vulnerable communities, where people are suffering from poverty, water scarcity, inadequate housing or other crises. “We’ve been quite shocked and surprised by some of the results,” said Nick Watts, a fellow at University College London’s Institute for Global Health and executive director of the Lancet Countdown, a project aimed at examining the links between climate change and public health. (October 30, 2017)The Washington Post [more on Climate Change and Environmental Health in our area]  

The health warnings are becoming more clear that increasingly more people will suffer as a result of a poor response to this worldwide crisis.

Many, including myself, have long thought that our media should have been viewing the increase in extreme weather and health issues around the world through the lens of Climate Change—or at least suggesting the possibilities. Most media have taken a very timid approach to informing the public about Climate Change, fueling widespread doubt about climate science, which in turn fails to give this crisis the priority it deserves.

How much more aware of Climate Change and threats to their health might the public be now if our media had been more attentive to climate scientists’ predictions on this crisis? How could we in the USA have had a decade-long debate about health care without including the health consequences of Climate Change?

Now, with more record-breaking extreme weather events and wildfires, the public, inured by a complacent media, still finds ways to avoid this crisis and the need to plan. How long will this delusional state, where we think we can keep this planetary crisis in a communications silo, last?
Could a climate denier been put into the top office of this country if the media had been more engaged with the science behind Climate Change early on?  What will be the price for dragging our feet so long on addressing Climate Change?

Now that we know we are living on a warming planet (with almost no brakes being applied), what is the nature of our new existence (denial heaped on more denial?) and what should our actions now be based on? What kinds of thinking should be our guide as we go deeper into the wormhole of Climate Change, where we keep passing critical benchmarks like sea level rise and higher concentrations of greenhouse gases?

What if: “Some of the changes we’re talking about are so enormous, you can’t adapt your way out.” (See above The Washington Post article.)

Meanwhile: It may have to be acknowledged at the up-and-coming Bonn Climate Talks that the 2C goal is unattainable. 3C, which would be a catastrophe, is more likely. At the same time the Trump team will be trying to push the wildly unpopular (and irrational) position that more fossil fuels are best for our future.

Time passes.