Environmental Action is a Responsibility for a Viable Planet

Abstract

Looking back on 2022, I reflect on the past and anticipate what future environmental health priorities may bring. . Reducing the collective production of ecological damage has manifested into a focus on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and lowering global temperatures. Greenhouse gas emissions are only one area of concern. At least ten environmental catastrophes totaling more than three billion dollars each occurred in the previous year. Worldwide, they include four floods, three droughts, two hurricanes, and a destructive storm named Eunice in Europe1. These events are disturbing as they suggest a new normal for the future. To investigate what climate impacts may occur in the future, scientists have modeled 1200 scenarios of planetary change to the year 2100. Their findings suggest that things may get worse in coming decades with uncertainty about whether human actions can bring about enough change for ecosystem viability by 21002.

Protecting the natural and built environments is crucial to human survival but is often viewed as the responsibility of expert environmental health specialists. A compartmentalization of the environment into distinct parts (natural, human, physical, or biotic and abiotic) quickly falls apart when larger interactive frameworks are examined. Such is the case with multiple components of environmental change through climate change. Different scholars discuss the problem from different perspectives, as a challenge from population overshoot, fossil fuel emissions, planetary heating, or human industrial production and pollution. These perspectives of environmental degradation center on the shift to a human-driven environment causing unprecedented abrupt consequences3.