Bonnie Schneider - Taking the Heat: How Climate Change Is Affecting Your Mind, Body, and Spirit and What You Can Do About It

Taking the Heat

How Climate Change Is Affecting Your Mind, Body, and Spirit and What You Can Do About It

Bonnie Schneider

Bonnie Schneiders Taking the Heat details how climate change impacts the things we care aboutour health, our childrenand provides resources to help us build a more just, sustainable world.

Gaurab Basu, MD, MPH, codirector of the Center for Health Equity Education and Advocacy and instructor at Harvard Medical School

Without presence of mind, how can we become better stewards of our bodies and planet? In Taking the Heat, Bonnie Schneider has crafted a powerful playbook that offers immediate solutions to these urgent questions.

Amy Reyer, PhD, author of the blog The Art of Living Slowly

Bonnie Schneider combines her extensive knowledge of meteorology and her clear, compelling writing style to navigate readers through the sciences so they can see for themselves the impacts of climate change on their own well-being.

Drew Shindell, Nicholas Distinguished Professor of Earth Science at Duke University

This excellent book does a great job of helping us understand unfamiliar experiences like eco-anxiety and climate grief. It belongs on the shelf of every mental and physical health professional and community leader struggling with how to help people cope with our increasingly out-of-control weather and climate.

Linda Buzzell, coeditor of Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind

This is an important book for our times that marries meteorological understanding with health hazards associated with climate change. Im pleased that Bonnie Schneider is bringing valuable advice to the publics attention.

Janet Lewis, MD, founding member of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance

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Copyright 2021 by Bonnie Schneider

This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subjects addressed in the publication. It is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering medical, health, or any other kind of personal professional services in the book. The reader should consult his or her medical, health, or other competent professional before adopting any of the suggestions in this book or drawing inferences from it.

The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, that is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

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Cover design by Patrick Sullivan

Author photo by Michael Stothard

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schneider, Bonnie, author.

Title: Taking the heat : how climate change is affecting your mind, body, and spirit and what you can do about it / by Bonnie Schneider.

Description: First Tiller Press trade paperback edition. | New York : Tiller Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021023886 (print) | LCCN 2021023887 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982166076 (paperback) | ISBN 9781982166083 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Human beingsEffect of climate on. | Climatic changesPsychological aspects. | Climatic changesPhysiological effect. | Environmental psychology. | Ecophysiology. | Self-care, Health.

Classification: LCC GF71 .S35 2021 (print) | LCC GF71 (ebook) | DDC 304.2/5dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021023886

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021023887

ISBN 978-1-9821-6607-6

ISBN 978-1-9821-6608-3 (ebook)

A s a family medicine professor and physician for over thirty years, my research and teaching has focused on primary care, cancer screening, and public policy. I can remember the exact moment when I personally realized that climate change was a threat to human health. That insight put me on a new course in life. In 2008, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its fourth report, featuring an entire chapter on human health. To learn more about it, I attended a meeting with experts from around the country, including a climate scientist, public health experts, and authorities on communication. As a doctor who had taken an oath to protect people from harm, I knew then that climate change demanded my attention.

Several years later, I founded the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health. This organization includes members of twelve major medical organizations, among them the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American College of Physicians. In assessing physicians experiences with the health effects of climate change and their attitudes about and interest in engaging with the problem, our organization mobilizes public opinion to support ceasing the damage we inflict on our climate, protecting those who are vulnerable, and claiming a healthier future.

Climate change is one of the most important issues of our time and has major health and health care implications. Our national group now represents more than six hundred thousand clinical practitioners, including state-level groups (Clinicians for Climate Action), affiliated health organizations, and thousands of individual health advocates who devote their time to pushing for measures that will stop the degradation of our climate and protect the growing number of people who face health risks. The voices of Americas medical societies have the potential to help reframe the dialogueputting human health and well-being front and center in the conversation. This important message needs to reach the public.

Thats why, when Bonnie Schneider first reached out to me about her proposal for this book, I was intrigued at the prospect: a compelling description of health in the time of climate change.

And now, after reading the completed manuscript, my intrigue has turned to admiration. This beautifully written book helps to fill the gap in our awareness of the health hazards we face in the wake of climate change. Whether describing the anxiety experienced by young people who mourn the environmental damage to our world, the heat-related illnesses children suffer after being exposed in ways that their parents dont recognize, or the unexpected infections spread by mosquitos and ticks, Bonnies writing and analysis are crystal clear and thoroughly informative.