Climate Change

Some foundational behavioral-science principles can enable health professionals to use statistics about the health effects of climate change in ways that inform and promote action.

The editors announce a new NEJM Group series on climate change and the increasingly urgent health and care delivery challenges we face. Articles will appear in the Journal, in NEJM Evidence, and in NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery.

Climate change and air pollution, largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels, pose serious harms to children’s health. Children from communities of color and low-income communities are disproportionately harmed.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s reasoning in two Covid-19 cases threatens the power of Congress to legislate against risks in advance. Now, West Virginia v. EPA could have broad implications for protecting public health.

The Department of Health and Human Services has made commitments to climate-change resilience in U.S. communities and decarbonization in our health systems, but myriad public and private organizations will have to be mobilized to achieve these goals.

Progress in four areas of the health sector is essential for decarbonizing and responding to climate change: the supply chain, care delivery, professional education, and policy, financing, and metrics. A public–private Action Collaborative is taking on the challenge.

Environmental pollution is a cardiovascular risk factor. The Global Burden of Disease study estimated that pollution caused 9 million deaths in 2019, of which more than 60% were due to cardiovascular disease. Transitioning to renewable energy sources may reduce such deaths. This review summarizes the current evidence, and an interactive...

A joint editorial published simultaneously in biomedical journals across the globe calls for swift and decisive action, noting that only fundamental and equitable changes to societies worldwide will reverse our current trajectory.

A subtype of structural racism, environmental racism includes the use of racist practices in determining which communities receive health-protective, and which health-harming, infrastructure. What can physicians do about this underlying and often missed diagnosis?

Wildfires are increasingly common and projected to worsen with climate change. Health consequences include burns and mental health effects, as well as risks from air pollutants in smoke. Cutting carbon emissions to limit the global temperature increase to 2.0°C or 1.5°C above the preindustrial level would markedly reduce wildfire risks.

Understanding the challenges posed by the conjunction of the rapidly emerging Covid-19 pandemic and the insidiously evolving climate crisis is essential if we are to devise effective and equitable strategies to protect and improve health in the United States.

Members of the former (dismissed) EPA Particulate Matter Review Panel argue that current air-quality standards for fine particles (<2.5 μm in diameter) are insufficient and that the EPA-proposed plan to retain them will result in tens of thousands of premature deaths annually....

The full health implications of the climate crisis may be more immense and insidious than we have imagined. Although dedicated climate and health research is needed, this gap can be addressed more rapidly by adding a climate-change lens to existing lines of research.

As the climate crisis continues to unfold, the story of physician Alexander Leaf, who devoted his attention first to the nuclear threat and then to planetary health, offers much-needed inspiration for physician-activists.

Natural gas has been hailed as a clean “transition” fuel — a bridge from the coal and oil of the past to the clean energy sources of the future. But gas is associated with health hazards and reduced social welfare and poses grave dangers to the global climate.

The escalating effects of hurricanes on population health represent a double environmental injustice: disadvantaged populations sustain disproportionate harm, and those most vulnerable to hurricanes contribute little to the climate change that is exacerbating them.

Under the strange gravity of the Anthropocene era, clinical medicine has begun to feel a bit weightless. What does it mean to engage with individual distress inside a hospital while bearing witness to cataclysmic distress outside it?

Increasing population densities and subsequent range expansion, in conjunction with nondiscriminating biting habits and the capacity to transmit diverse pathogens, position the lone star tick as an important emerging health threat.

In the summer and fall of 2019, nine U.S. states reported 36 human cases (14 of them fatal) of EEE, an arthropod-borne viral (arboviral) disease transmitted by mosquitoes. The outbreak may be a harbinger of a new era of arboviral emergences.