White House makes public health pitch for climate change action

Climate change puts public health at risk and more needs to be done to mitigate that threat, White House officials said on Tuesday.  Longer, hotter summers will lead to longer allergy seasons and more respiratory problems, officials, including Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, warned. Wildfires will send smoke and soot into the air and smog will develop in big cities. Insects will expand their territories and bring diseases with them, and extreme weather will strain emergency health services. “Climate change is not just the biggest environmental challenge of our time, it is the biggest public health challenge of our time,” Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Gina McCarthy said at a White House summit on climate change and health.  Officials promoted a handful of EPA regulations as the backbone of the administration’s work on climate change, including a proposed rule on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. But they said more work needs to happen to protect people from health problems induced by climate change. The White House announced an assortment of measures to minimize the public health impacts on Tuesday, including an excessive heat warning system and an emphasis on tracking and publicizing climate change’s impact on people.  The new initiatives, and the White House’s summit, come the same day a medical journal released a major report on climate change’s effects on public health and after the EPA published a study on the economic results of combating it.  Public health, Obama energy and environment adviser Brian Deese said, “is what’s motivating President Obama to put this at the top of his agenda, both domestically and internationally, for the rest of his term.”...more