Feeling the heat? You’re not alone. The effects of climate change are palpable across the globe, with thousands of studies corroborating that at least 85% of the world’s population feel its direct impacts. Rising temperatures, changes in rainfall patterns, and proliferating extreme weather events signal that we need urgent climate change action. 

Climate action isn’t just for environmentalists and policymakers, though. Healthcare professionals are stepping up as one of the most important groups on the frontlines of the fight against climate change, witnessing its health ramifications firsthand. 

Doctors are facing growing challenges as the climate changes. Researchers project that cardiovascular deaths due to extreme heat will more than double in the United States in the coming decades. As temperatures climb, so will the spread of vector-borne diseases such as dengue fever throughout the U.S., which is currently experiencing its highest number of cases on record. Heatwaves are causing severe burns from hot outdoor surfaces, some even fatal. Wildfires are worsening, exposing millions to smoke and worsening air pollution. 

This Healthcare Humanitarian Day, let’s appreciate some of the ways medical professionals are going above and beyond and proving themselves to be a critical force in finding innovative solutions against the escalating public health crisis. 

Climate Change on the Medical Syllabus

Medical students are sounding the alarm, demanding that medical schools amp up their climate change education, recognizing how essential it is for healthcare providers to grasp the evolving landscape of climate-related health risks. 

A 2022 study revealed that only 55% of the 155 medical schools surveyed required climate change-related coursework. However, another survey found that 84% of surveyed students from 12 medical schools believe that it should be a core part of the medical school curriculum. A concerning 87% believed that their schools were dropping the ball and did not provide adequate education on the topic. 

Recognizing the critical gap in their education, passionate medical students like Natalie Baker are spearheading efforts to advocate for their schools to implement curricula that will effectively prepare these future doctors to address the consequences of climate change. Baker leads the organizations Medical Students for a Sustainable Future and Students for Environmental Action in Medicine, helping faculty develop a comprehensive climate change curriculum at Harvard Medical School. 

The goal of these curriculum changes, says Dr. Gaurab Basu, Director of Education and Policy at Harvard’s Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment, is to integrate climate change topics into the already-existing medical coursework. The curricula will introduce real-world connections that highlight the intersection between environmental issues and patient health without overwhelming them with too much new information. In this way, students might first learn the basics of kidney disease then examine how excessive heat can increase the incidence of kidney problems among outdoor workers due to dehydration. 

Trusted Voices Tackling Climate

Despite declining confidence in American institutions—the medical system as a whole reaching a decade low last year—nurses remain the most trusted healthcare profession. With their strong public trust and high ethics rating, nurses are emerging as a key ally in promoting understanding of climate change effects within the medical field, even pushing to make healthcare itself more sustainable. 

Take nurse Mia McPherson in Detroit, for example. She collaborated with a local nonprofit to provide a guidebook that explains the dangers of extreme heat to community members, rewording medical language to be more easily accessible. A longtime advocate for environmental justice, McPherson also aims to understand healthcare through the roots of illness, studying how urban food systems can combat food insecurity and improve nutrition. 

In a different approach, nurse Sara Wohlford in Virginia is tackling the healthcare sector’s contribution to climate change—8.5% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. After years of planning, Wohlford presented a sustainability plan to her hospital’s CEO and president. Her initiatives include increasing their recycling rates, cutting emissions from the gases used for anesthesia, and avoiding single-use plastic products. Wohlford is proving that hospitals can adopt sustainable practices and aims to expand these efforts across the Carilion system. 

Field Research, Literally

Another nurse, Dr. Roxana Chicas, is making waves with her groundbreaking research on climate-induced health risks among farmworkers in Central Florida. A bilingual immigrant born in El Salvador with a background in environmental health and specialty in kidney care, Chicas bridges language barriers to directly communicate with the workers, explaining the science behind the research to them. 

Chicas investigates the harsh realities faced by migrant farmworkers, who endure high rates of heat-related disease and mortality. With sensors to record core body temperature in real time and monitors for heart rate and physical activity, Chicas measured the workers’ physiologic responses to heat stress during their strenuous outdoor physical labor. 

Her study also tested practical interventions, such as having the workers wear cooling vests or bandanas on their head and drinking water infused with electrolytes, to consider the best options to protect against overheating and dehydration. Bandanas proved to be the most promising protection, with electrolyte water offering additional benefits.

Chicas hopes to raise awareness to have better protective standards and policies for these agricultural workers, whose rate of heat-related death is almost 20 times greater than the general American workforce and whose population is mostly made up of Latino immigrants. With a large portion of these workers being undocumented and more comfortable speaking Spanish, Chicas is drawing attention to the critical need for protections of these vulnerable and often overlooked demographics. 

Climate’s Mental Tolls

Psychiatrists are witnessing a worrying trend: patients with mental health conditions are experiencing heightened levels of vulnerability to the effects of climate change. In July 2022, Stephan Goodwin, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia several years prior, ventured out from his home in Arizona and was found less than two days later on the verge of death. He had been exposed to the brutal 111-degree Phoenix heat for over 24 hours before collapsing. 

This tragic incident highlights a serious issue. During a 2021 heatwave in British Columbia,  13% of heat-related casualties had schizophrenia. Individuals with schizophrenia are three times more likely to die in a heatwave compared to normal conditions. The heat impairs the brain’s ability to make sound decisions, and combined with the dehydrating effects of antipsychotic medications that make it harder to tolerate high temperatures, the heightened dangers are clear. Add this to the higher likeliness to be economically vulnerable, homeless, and self-medicating with substances that exacerbate heat intolerance, and the risk skyrockets. 

Recognizing this vulnerability, psychiatrists are calling for policy changes to offer better protection for those affected. In March 2023, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) issued a position statement on mental health and climate change, advocating for efforts to fund further research, improve infrastructure, and develop a response plan to address the mental health impacts of climate-related weather events.

As for the rest of the population, fear about climate change is on the rise. From 2018 to 2023, searches regarding climate anxiety increased by 4,590%. Effects can extend from stress to the development of depression, anxiety, PTSD, substance abuse, and suicide. Young people are particularly concerned, with more than 50% of surveyed 16 to 25 year olds in a study reporting to feel powerless, angry, and helpless. 

Forensic psychiatrist and EARTHDAY.org board member, Dr. Lise Van Susteren, is an expert on the mental health impacts of climate change. Trained by Al Gore himself to inform the public about global warming, she fights for both legal climate action and for collective action by mental health practitioners to address climate disruption for youth. With a team of these “climate-aware therapists,” she made the “EcoCyclopedia”—a resource that teaches the public about how to cope with the effects of climate change. Dr. Van Susteren’s work and the growing movement of climate-aware therapists offer a glimmer of hope for anyone experiencing climate anxieties. 

A Generation at Risk

Pediatricians are stressing the need to talk about climate change during routine check-ups, as the impacts of climate change on children’s health become more apparent. A growing body of research highlights how climate change disproportionately affects younger populations, heightening their vulnerability. 

For instance, excessive heat raises the risk of premature birth, leading to future respiratory and neurological problems. Infants are also among the most likely to die in a heatwave. Children are particularly sensitive to heatwaves because their bodies’ ability to regulate temperature and cool themselves is less developed. Plus, they breathe in more air per minute, making them more affected by the toxins in wildfire smoke. The adverse effects of climate change even extend to inhibiting their academic performance, particularly among households without access to air conditioning and children of color. 

In response to these challenges, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a policy statement on climate change that encourages pediatricians to talk to families about climate risks and educate them on strategies to protect themselves and their children. Only 4% of parents surveyed in 2021 reported that climate change was mentioned during their children’s checkups, reflecting massive discrepancies in conveying the gravity of the situation.

In an effort to increase access to child healthcare, pediatric psychologist Dr. Cierra Gromoff founded a telehealth startup that includes a function to identify local environmental risks by analyzing a patient’s home and school addresses. This innovative tool helps doctors anticipate potential health threats before they materialize. Dr. Gromoff also advocates for free resources to support families in managing these health risks and alleviating climate-related anxiety. 

With the effects of climate change infiltrating our lives, healthcare professionals are showing up as the everyday heroes we need. Their dedication to protecting global health is a reminder that building a healthier future will require all hands on deck. Let’s continue to lift up these medical professionals and spread environmental awareness, especially among the youth, so we can translate concern into action. Check out EARTHDAY.ORG’s Climate Education campaign for valuable resources to introduce environmental realities to children early on and train them to be the next generation of forward thinkers.

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Science fiction has a remarkable track record of predicting the future. From inventions that seem completely futuristic to cultural or political scenarios that feel unimaginable in the real world. But both often become part of our everyday lives in the 21st century. 

The 1960s show The Jetsons featured a futuristic “videophone,” a concept that is now mirrored in our everyday life in the form of the ubiquitous FaceTime and Zoom. We’ve turned sci-fi’s once-fanciful visions of technological connectivity into everyday realities and the list is extensive. For example, we’ve embraced mass surveillance—a concept first envisioned in George Orwell’s dystopian 1984—through our daily consumption of reality television shows, from Big Brother to Love Island,  all made possible with security cameras. Devices like Amazon’s Alexa are eavesdropping on around 200 million of us globally and most of us don’t even know it and Star Trek alone predicted tablets, touchscreens, computer assistants and more. 

The sci-fi genre not only sparks innovations but can actively shape the future too, by guiding us towards developing technologies, from submarines and virtual reality. In this way the lines between science and fiction are blurred. Often sci-fi touches on the issues that environmentalists grapple with every day, for example the seminal book by Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, paints a grim picture of a world in which pesticides have annihilated wildlife, and extinguished birdsong. Which at the time was a serious reality. In sci-fi films such as Interstellar and WALL-E, film-makers too lean into this theme, envisioning an Earth that is so damaged and beyond repair that humans must venture out to the cosmos to seek a new home. 

The reality today is that right now, more than 100 countries are at serious risk of degradation through desertification and wildfires burn hundreds of millions of hectares of land every single year. On top of these two realities, humans produce two billion tons of waste annually—an amount equal to more than five times the weight of the human population. Which collectively is why over three-quarters of Earth’s land is currently degraded, and this figure could soar to more than 90% by 2050. 

As we face the all-too-real climate crisis, what can we learn from the speculative futures created by science fiction about how to best move forward? 

Cautionary Tales

Some sci-fi movies feature situations that are absolutely dire but based on real issues we are facing albeit it slightly exaggerated, such as the narrative of the film Snowpiercer which illustrates a scenario in which humanity tries to undo climate change.  Director Bong Joon Ho is no stranger to biting social commentary, with movies such as Parasite and Okja under his belt, and his 2013 film is no different.  In Snowpiercer, humanity’s attempt to halt global warming by geoengineering a cooling agent to be shot into the atmosphere backfires disastrously, plunging the Earth into a new ice age. In a nightmarish end result, only a few thousand survivors remain, all confined aboard a perpetually moving train circling the globe battling for survival. 

Further highlighting the folly of humanity, the train operates as a microcosm of previous society, rigidly divided by a strict class system that mirrors the inequalities currently plaguing our reality. The lower class is relegated to the harsh conditions of the tail end of the train, while the elite live in luxury at the front, in many ways it is similar to how marginalized populations are forced to cope with the most extreme impacts of climate change. Snowpiercer serves as a forewarning: if we don’t change our destructive behaviors and the value systems that perpetuate them, the future will be apocalyptic.  

Meanwhile Don’t Look Up’s star-studded cast (Leo, J-Law and Meryl, oh my!) features two scientists racing against time, and widespread indifference, to alert the world to an impending comet on a trajectory with planet Earth.  

Director Adam McKay doesn’t disguise that this sci-fi movie comes with a message, with caricatures that hit a little too close to home: a selfish president who refuses to accept the science while attempting to cover up a relationship with an adult film star; a tech billionaire who prioritizes profit over ethics and has an obsessive preoccupation with colonizing outer space; an outspoken activist who people would rather memeify than listen to; a popstar whose breakup gets more airtime than the comet; TV broadcasters who care more to distract than inform; and to top it all off, a scientifically supported yet controversially disputed as ‘fake news’, cataclysmic event that’s threatening the Earth. 

The heavy satire in the movie reveals an unfortunate truth and even though the planet killing comet is fictional, the characters’ reactions to it, reflect humanity’s genuine apathy to the climate crisis.  When almost a quarter of Congress members are climate deniers and 40% of Americans either believe there is no evidence of climate change or that it’s due to ‘natural patterns’, how ‘fictional’ is it really? 

Don’t Look Up sends a warning shot that it’s not just one evil corporation alone or one bad world leader solely at fault, it is a collective failure of society at large to prioritize the planet’s well-being, and our long term survival as a species, over short-term interests. 

Glimmers of Galactic Hope

Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film Interstellar follows a group of astronauts who must find a new planet for humanity to occupy after Earth is rendered uninhabitable by a global blight that has killed off almost all plant life. Taking place in the latter half of the 21st century, we see a world that is running out of food and breathable oxygen, where the threat of human extinction looms large. There seems to be no hope left for the human race until a NASA scientist finds a wormhole that could act as a cosmic shortcut to a possible Planet B and launches a risky expedition. 

Of course, in our current timeline and reality, there is no Planet B. But that does not prevent Hans Zimmer’s soaring soundtrack and the theoretical physicist-backed scientifically-accurate script transport you to this extraterrestrial realm. Be it only for the three-hour runtime. Interstellar allows us a glimpse into a bleak state of the world that we must never allow ourselves to reach while also finding a potential solution.  What makes Nolan’s movie different is that rather than the moral of the story being the inevitability of ecological collapse, he allows us to focus on the possibility of redemption and the ethos of discovery.  

Other sci-fi films feature an already destroyed world that is deemed worth saving. Pixar’s WALL-E imagines a distant future where humans have abandoned Earth, now a highly polluted wasteland littered with towering skyscrapers of waste and remnants of mega corporate ruin. The planet had become so contaminated by trash and greenhouse gasses that it could no longer sustain life, pushing humanity into starliners in space. 

WALL-E the robot is the last remaining Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-class, compacting trash into piles and collecting salvageable objects left on Earth including his latest find—a green seedling. 

When EVE, a robot sent to Earth to find signs of life, arrives, she discovers WALL-E and his precious seedling. She brings WALL-E to the Axiom, a massive starliner where the human race has reached peak laziness, living in hovering recliners and drinking meals from plastic cups. 

WALL-E and EVE realize that the seedling is proof that life can return to Earth. Disproving what world leaders and corporations have told the surviving population of humans. They manage to bring the seedling back to Earth, cultivate the land, restore agriculture and rejuvenate the planet. This emotional and  insightful animated feature shows children and adults alike that even a ravaged world can be revived with care and determination, led by those who dare to believe in the possibility of transformation. 

The heroes in these sci-fi flicks refuse to follow the status quo,each of them in some way challenges the mindsets that led to the downfall of their worlds in the first place. Whether they are robots with hearts of gold, astronomers speaking out on national television, scientists brave enough to leave their lives behind to save humanity, or rebellion leaders fighting back against the ruling class, these protagonists risk everything to fight against complacency.

We can’t let time pass us by while we become the lackadaisical humans from WALL-E and Don’t Look Up, so glued to screens that we can’t see the world around us. Nor can we ruin the Earth so badly that relocating to another planet becomes our only option.  We must harness the imaginative and valiant spirits of sci-fi heroes and educate ourselves and others about climate change so we can avoid these speculative futures becoming our reality. Only through climate education can we develop the revolutionary minds that will pave a path towards our own sustainable future.

This article is available for republishing on your website, newsletter, magazine, newspaper, or blog. The accompanying imagery is also cleared for use. Please ensure that the author’s name and their affiliation with EARTHDAY.ORG are credited. Kindly inform us if you republish so we can acknowledge, tag, or repost your content. You may notify us via email at davies@earthday.org or fielder@earthday.org.

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As summer heats up, a stroll through the farmers market offers the sweet smell of ripe strawberries and peaches. The warm temperatures are making it the best time to enjoy these fruits, as well as raspberries, melons, zucchini, and more. The colder months bring the peak freshness of other produce such as oranges, broccoli, and carrots. The abundance of produce available year-round in supermarkets makes it easy for us to forget the correlation between climate and harvest seasons. However, recent shifts in timing — particularly the earlier ripening observed in highly climate-sensitive crops such as wine grapes — present a sign of the ongoing impact of climate change on agricultural ecosystems.

How Do We Have Produce Year-round? 

Thanks to food preservation technology, agricultural techniques, and increased global trade, we can now enjoy fresh produce any time we want it and for items that cannot be grown locally, they can be grown in regions with optimal growing conditions and imported. FSo for example, fruits that do not grow naturally in the U.S. in the dead of winter can be sourced from countries experiencing the summer heat in the Southern Hemisphere. For instance, Chile, which has summer during the U.S. winter, supplies 98% of America’s imported peaches. 

Some fresh produce can be stored for extended periods until it’s sold. Climacteric crops, such as bananas, tomatoes, apples, and avocados, continue to ripen after harvest due to increased respiration and ethylene production, which accelerates the ripening process. To ensure longer shelf life, these crops are often picked early and allowed to ripen during transport. In contrast, hardy non-climacteric crops like potatoes, carrots, and onions do not continue ripening after harvest. They are picked when ripe and stored in controlled conditions to prevent spoilage.

Farmers have begun cultivating new varieties of crops, like strawberries, designed for extended harvest seasons and grown in weather-resistant systems to ensure year-round production.

How is Climate Change Affecting Agricultural Production? 

Despite the luxury of being able to buy a huge range of fresh produce all year-round, climate change poses significant challenges to food production, including extreme weather events that harm soil health and water supplies and increased pest and disease outbreaks. With global average temperatures projected to rise up to 4.4℃ by the end of the century and increasingly erratic changes in precipitation patterns expected, agricultural regions will face disruptions that threaten crop yields and food production.

Temperate climates are experiencing more intense and unpredictable weather patterns that harm the growth of a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and nuts. The tropics, an area surrounding the equator, are facing severe floods due to increased precipitation. In the mid-latitudes, prolonged droughts and higher temperatures are straining water supplies and disrupting the phenology, or cyclical patterns, of plants. Elevated winter temperatures deprive crops of a winter chill period, a necessary phase for trees to start blooming and developing fruits. This leads to inconsistent, delayed, and decreased fruit development, overall reducing the yield in fruits such as apples, pears, and wine grapes. Warmer springs and summers and milder winters also worsen pest outbreaks, further threatening yields.

To combat these issues, farmers have implemented adaptation strategies such as constructing  protective structures, namely plastic or glass tunnels and greenhouses equipped with artificial light, heat, sprinkler, and wind systems. These methods maintain the microclimate, allowing for earlier or later harvesting, and support a year-round production season in crops such as strawberries. As a long-term strategy, new varieties of crops are also being developed to enhance resilience against climate change. 

In response to water scarcity, farmers have also tested the use of water-saving tactics including the utilization of desalinated water or wastewater for irrigation on crops such as olives, apples, peaches, and almonds. Another popular strategy to maximize water use efficiency is deficit irrigation, a controlled process of underwatering crops to encourage plant adaptation and achieve a higher quality with reduced water consumption. 

Climate change threatens valuable horticultural crops such as tomatoes, whose production is projected to decrease 6% by 2050 due to increased heat stress on the plants. In high tomato-producing regions including Southern California and Italy, water constraints may limit current levels of production. However, cooler regions with historically higher precipitation such as Northern California and China — other major tomato producers — may benefit from rising temperatures, inadvertently adopting conditions that favor tomato growth.

The Climate Change Canary

Highly sensitive to acute shifts in climate, grapes serve as both a valuable agricultural product and a crucial indicator of the impact of climate change. They truly are the equivalent of the canary in the coal mine. With 49% of grapes used to make wine and spirits, the industry is already seeing the effects of changing weather patterns in yield and quality. Global wine production decreased by 9.6% from 2022 to 2023, a significant decline marking the lowest output since 1961. 

Wine-producing regions could see a 20 to 70% reduction in suitable surface area by 2100, with 90% of traditional wine regions in Spain, Italy, Greece, and Southern California at risk of disappearing due to excessive drought and heat waves. While coastal and lowland areas will be the most jeopardized, drought will almost certainly disrupt production in important winemaking regions such as Bordeaux, Tuscany, and Rioja. 

While wine grapes can be cultivated in most places in the world, small climate variations significantly impact the taste, sweetness, acidity, alcohol content, and overall quality of wine. Climate change is threatening historically reputable wines, with too-high temperatures producing wine with high alcohol contents and low acidity and too-cool temperatures producing wine with overly acidic and green notes.

Over the past several decades, the industry has begun to adapt to warmer temperatures by moving harvest seasons earlier by two to three weeks and cultivating drought-resistant vine varieties. Farmers have also implemented low water systems and irrigation to combat water scarcity.

Regions with cooler climates may actually increase their suitability for wine cultivation and enhance production in up to 25% of existing wine regions. Expanding new regions of wine production northward could create a net increase of 60% of suitable growing regions. However, this will require converting wildland which will impact land use and natural resources.

While changing grapevine variety is one of the most promising strategies to adapt to changing climates, wine producers may struggle to make the switch because of the demand for already-existing varieties. In the future, consumers may have to search for their preferred wines by region of origin rather than variety due to the increasing constraints on high-quality wine production. 

How Can We Eat in Harmony with the Planet?

Just as the seasons change and farmers adapt to cultivate their crops in changing climates, it is vital to keep an open mind and strive to eat in harmony with the planet. Eating locally reduces emissions from transport, production, and land-use change, which account for 19% of energy usage in the food system. Embracing seasonal produce can provide fresher and more nutritious food that contain fewer chemicals and preservatives while also being easier on your wallet. Careful planning and proper storage can reduce food waste. Buying from farmers who use regenerative agriculture practices, such as no till farming and using cover crops, helps improve soil health. 

As we head to the farmers markets this summer, let’s savor the best produce the season can offer. Naturally.

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