I used to be a reluctant environmentalist. Of course, as a scientist, I’ve always believed in the science of climate change – even a casual examination of the evidence shows that humans burning fossil fuels into the Earth’s atmosphere is causing it. But my reluctance wasn’t about science, it’s just that the images of melting glaciers and dying polar bears – while compelling for many people – just didn’t move me. I’m not an outdoorsman. Besides, polar bears, however cute and cuddly they may seem, eat their own young.
As a doctor, I care about people. And the consequences of climate change felt so remote from the daily struggle. Babies are dying, so why should I be worried about faraway glaciers and cannibalistic bears? But after being appointed health director of the City of Detroit, I realized that the forces that cause climate change are the same forces that poisoned the lungs of babies in my city. Today, I’m standing up for the Green New Deal because it’s also a Public Health New Deal.
As health director, my job was to provide basic public health goods and services for 700,000 people in a city that had been marginalized by almost every level of government intended to serve them. At the time, Detroiters were three times as likely to wind up in a hospital for asthma as the Michigan state average. A disproportionate number of those Detroiters were kids. A child with even mild asthma may miss one school day every two weeks. Those kids aren’t playing hooky – they’re missing school because they cannot breathe.
In early 2016, an oil refinery in south-west Detroit filed a permit request to raise its emissions of sulfur dioxide – a harmful pollutant that can trigger asthma spells – in a part of the city that, per the Environmental Protection Agency, already had too much sulfur dioxide in its air. Working with the local community, our health department helped force the polluter to spend $10m to reduce their emissions when they had previously requested to increase them. In fighting for public health, I had accidentally become a full-fledged environmental activist.
But beyond the poisoned air they’re forced to breath, so many of our kids in Detroit suffer because they are born into poverty. In the US, too few people have a job that pays a living wage or offers basic benefits, like healthcare, retirement and paid leave. It’s far worse for black Americans. The American prison-industrial complex robs black families of their brothers and fathers. Too many mothers are left working two, sometimes three jobs to make ends meet. Children born into chronic poverty are left without the basic means of good health – healthy food, supportive and nurturing schools, or reliable transportation to see a doctor.
The Green New Deal recognizes that the challenges of stopping climate change and providing low-income kids what they need to thrive are not mutually exclusive –rather they are mutually inclusive. Poor kids suffer asthma in communities like Detroit because they are poor. These kids live in the air sheds of major polluters because their families cannot afford housing elsewhere. And those polluters set up shop in poor communities because they know the families in those communities are too busy surviving to stand up. Those same corporations also spend billions to lobby government for polices that erode worker rights, drive poverty – and promote climate change.
I’m standing up for the Green New Deal because it stands up for the kids of Detroit. It recognizes that climate change is an imminent threat to our Earth, and that the benefits of solving it must go to the people who have been most affected by it. By investing in well-paying, secure jobs to revolutionize our energy system, it can lift communities like Detroit out of poverty – and by eliminating the emissions that drive climate change, it can address the local consequences of those emissions for children. Most importantly, it would avert the irreversible, catastrophic consequences that our failure to act will let loose.
As a public health doctor, I know that by eliminating the local consequences of fossil fuel emissions, and lifting whole communities out of poverty, the Green New Deal will also be a Public Health New Deal. Climate scientists suggest we have 11 years to act until the global consequences of climate change are irreversible – but every day, the consequences of pollution in the lives of countless children all over our country become irreversible. Let us act now for our kids, for our globe.
