Q:  Will the warmer weather from climate change at least be good for people’s health?

A:  Unfortunately, quite the opposite. Climate change has already caused, and will too soon have even more severe, negative impacts on people’s health in multiple ways.

An increase in heat related illnesses:

An increase in non-infectious diseases:

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Problems caused by extreme weather events, e.g. floods, hurricanes, droughts, etc.:

An increase in respiratory illnesses:

Limitations in our food supply (for example due to drought, floods, etc.):

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An increase in psychological issues in many people.

An increase in infectious diseases: this is an issue with the potential for an obvious and huge negative impact. For example, researchers looked through the medical literature and found that 218 out of 375 human infectious diseases they identified (58 percent) could be expected to be made worse by one of the types of extreme weather caused by climate change.

The bottom line: our health is linked to the environment we live in.  Things that affect our environment will, of course, have potential effects on our health, both directly and indirectly. 

Global warming is changing our environment; this is NOT an opinion but a fact. I do not know how to address the climate change deniers (watching the movie "Don’t Look Up" may give people a little bit of insight), and any discussion of that is beyond the scope of this column. Sure, we would expect the earth to adapt/recover from the man-made climate change now occurring, but it is expected that this would take hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. I don’t think relying on this is a realistic way to address the issue. 

Jeff Hersh, Ph.D., M.D., can be reached at DrHersh@juno.com.