Climate Chaos: Your Health at Risk: What You Can Do to Protect Yourself and Your Family

Why should we care about climate chaos and global warming? Because, among other risky outcomes, they may seriously harm our health! Scientists around the world are in agreement that global warming, more aptly named climate change, is occurring and human activity is the primary cause. The debate now is in the scientific and policy worlds about just how harmful climate change will be and what are the best ways to stop it. One of those scientists is author Cindy Parker, who believes climate change is the most health-damaging problem humanity has ever faced. Parker has thus immersed herself during the past ten years in educating the public and health professionals about how climate change will affect our well-being. Here, she and husband, Steve Shapiro, a psychologist and former journalist, describe what we can expect if climate change continues unabated. The authors explain our possible physical and mental responses to such climate change factors as heat stress, poor air quality, insufficient water resources, and the rise of infectious diseases fueled by even minor increases in temperature. They also show how other changes that may result from climate change-including sea level rise, extreme weather events, and altered food supplies can harm human health. Parker and Shapiro have found, however, that just talking about the problem is not enough. Actions that can prevent or reduce climate change's harm are presented in each chapter.

CINDY L. PARKER, MD, MPH, is Co-Director of the Program on Global Sustainability and Health at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is also a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine. She began her career as a family practice physician and, then recognized that she could help people more by by focusing on preventing health problems before they started. Climate change is, in her view, the most health-damaging problem humanity has ever faced.

STEVEN M. SHAPIRO, PhD, is a Clinical Supervisor and a Counseling Psychologist at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center's Community Psychiatry Program, which provides community-based mental health services to indigent children and families in the Baltimore area. A former health and social issues journalist, who worked in that role for the American Medical Association and publications includingScience Digest magazine, Shapiro has focused his writings on how to motivate people to choose healther behaviors. His many awards in journalism include the American College of Emergency Physicians Award of Excellence, the American Heart Association Howard W. Blakeslee Journalism Award, and a National Headliner Award for Outstanding News Reporting.