There’s a little boy in my hometown of Detroit who may not know about the pope’s encyclical on climate change, or today’s White House summit on climate and public health, but he is all too familiar with the issues. He feels them in his lungs.
Jawuan Landrum’s son Marcell, who just turned 10, loves to be outside, playing basketball and baseball. But he was born with respiratory problems, and the air pollution from oil refineries, steel mills and power plants near his home makes those problems tougher to cope with.
{mosads}Marcell’s asthma is bad enough that sometimes he can only breathe through his mouth. He has tubes in his ears because of an upper respiratory disorder. He’s been undergoing surgeries since he was three years old. And every time Marcell comes home, the very air around him when he tries to recover attacks him.
The uptick in attention to climate change and public health is encouraging and urgently needed. This is especially true because the effects of pollution and global warming disproportionately impact working people, the poor and people of color, both in the United States and around the world.
“Hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor,” Pope Francis writes in his encyclical Laudato Si as he explains that environmental degradation puts the least resourced communities at the greatest present and future risk.
“Exposure to atmospheric pollutants produces a broad spectrum of health hazards, especially for the poor,” the pope adds.
Marcell’s story is one of millions.
Maribel Castillón knows many more of those stories. As a public health nurse with Los Angeles County’s Children’s Health and Disabilities Prevention Program, she has a case load full of clients with asthma and bronchitis aged 0 to 21.
Zero to 21. Infants draw their first breaths from the pollution we created.
Castillón says the asthma rate is not falling in L.A., but at least it’s not rising, in part because state and local governments have taken action. They have implemented strict laws requiring registration of smog-emitting vehicles. And California offers tax credits for “low or no”-emission vehicles. Also, through her union, SEIU Local 721, Castillón and her colleagues were able to secure an agreement allowing public employers in the State of California to give incentives to workers for using alternative transportation.
She says it’s time to go bigger, and I agree.
In advance of the summit it will host today, the White House released a report that shows acting on climate change—including reducing coal and natural gas power plant emissions—will save thousands of lives and billions of dollars. President Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency are finalizing a Clean Power Plan that the United States will submit to the United Nations prior to international climate change negotiations, slated for December in Paris. These two developments—the president’s plan and the Paris talks—represent the best opportunity in the foreseeable future to reduce carbon emissions and curb the warming of the atmosphere.
At today’s event, administration officials will hear from healthcare professionals, scientists and a host others—including SEIU leaders—with a stake in solving climate change.
And really, that’s all of us, including the 2 million members of the Service Employees International Union. The same people struggling for economic justice also need climate justice. We’re all looking to the president and leaders worldwide to take action. Today’s dialogue is a part of that, and we’ll be asking questions and following along on Twitter via #ActOnClimate.
The hour is late, but hope is not lost. “Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start,” Pope Francis writes in his groundbreaking encyclical.
Let us take up this challenge. That’s what nurse Maribel Castillón means when she says it’s time to go bigger. And the health of millions—like a 10-year-old boy in Detroit who just wants to shoot some hoops and breathe in the summer air—depends on it.
Henry is international president of the Service Employees International Union.