Climate Change and the People's Health

Climate change and social inequity are both sprawling, insidious forces that threaten populations around the world. It's time we start talking about them together.

Climate Change and the People's Health offers a brave and ambitious new framework for understanding how our planet's two greatest existential threats comingle, complement, and amplify one another -- and what can be done to mitigate future harm. In doing so it posits three new modes of thinking:

- That climate change interacts with the social determinants of health and exacerbates existing health inequities
- The idea of a "consumptagenic system" -- a network of policies, processes, governance and modes of understanding that fuel unhealthy, and environmentally destructive production and consumption
- The steps necessary to move from denial and inertia toward effective mobilization, including economic, social, and policy interventions

With insights from physical science, social science, and humanities, this short book examines how climate change and social inequity are indelibly linked, and considering them together can bring about effective change in social equity, health, and the environment.


"The author hopes to reach public health professionals, policymakers, scientists, economists, etc., who would be interested in collaborating in an integrated way to address the problems of health inequities brought about by climate change. This book will provide a scientific foundation for such
collaboration and would also make an excellent complementary textbook to public health and sociology courses that deal with environmental health, climate change, and social inequity and health determinants. It is also a useful guide for those in urban planning and organizations working on reducing
the impact of climate change on society." -- Betty C. Jung, Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Public Health, Southern Connecticut State University, World Medical and Health Policy

"This would be a handy text for graduate courses on climate change. Apart from the clarity of presentation and the accessibility of the book, the tone is attractively positive, in the spirit of Raymond Williams' call to 'make hope practical, rather than despair convincing'." -- Alistair Woodward,
International Journal of Epidemiology