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M12.9 Blog: Climate Change

BLOG about the following:
  1. What do you personally find most troubling about climate change?
I find it troubling that we are all collectively destroying our home and worsening the health of everyone in the process. It is scary that we are all contributing to the destruction of planet earth and our own human health at such a rapid pace and are not doing anything to stop it. I fear that there will be mass extinction of the most vulnerable people on earth within our lifetimes. It makes me worry about the future of humanity and question whether it is even ethical for me to have children. It seems wrong to bring children into a world that we have already destroyed beyond repair and one that will poison them because of our bad actions, beginning in the womb. 
  1. As a public health professional, what do you think needs the greatest attention right now?
I think everything needs attention. Climate change is honestly one of the most overwhelming topics for me to think about. My partner and I sometimes cannot sleep when we talk about how troubling the entire issue has become. There seems to be no solution and no incentive for the people in power who can actually stop this catastrophic destruction of our planet to do anything meaningful about it. It seems so ignorant and short-sighted that capitalism has made us all so obsessed and motivated by money that we are unable to see the bigger picture of the purpose of humanity. As a public health professional, I think that the hazards to human health require the greatest attention at this moment. Specifically, I think renewable energy is an important industry that we must rapidly shift to across the globe. We need to stop relying on oil and coal and completely shut down those industries everywhere immediately. I strongly believe that we should be putting all our resources into switching to renewable energy sources and that the government should be way more heavy-handed about ending our reliance on oil and other dirty industries that are leading the rapid destruction of our planet. I wish we could just ban the oil industry and force everyone to switch to renewable or nothing. I also think we should regulate every part of the transportation industry and develop sustainable and robust public transportation that is government-funded to incentivize everyone using it instead of relying on individual transport. 
  1. If you were visiting with a long-lost relative who had never heard about climate change, how would you describe it and its attendant human health and ecological threats?
I would describe it as the catastrophic destruction of our environment and home. I like to think of it as an analogous to when humans get a fever. Even a few degrees hotter than usual can lead to horrendous health outcomes and death. This is exactly what is happening to our planet. And every degree hotter is exponentially worse for all of us. I would also describe the myriad of health issues we are experiencing right now and that will only worsen as climate change continues. We are killing our children and not giving them a fair chance at a healthy and thriving life because we have destoyed their environment and polluted it to the point that we are poisoning them from the second they are concieved in the womb. Climate change is a terrible sickness for our planet and humans are the main cause of it. We are the virus that is destroying our planet. 

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