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Hot Enough For Ya?

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Now that my son is 11, I often get an “I know, I know” (often followed by an eye-roll) in response to trying to share a tidbit of wisdom or offering of some fatherly advice.

But then a funny thing happens. He gets challenged by something or experiences one of life’s curveballs and suddenly he makes me feel useful and needed. “I know, I know” converts to a hunger for answers to help figure out how to maneuver through the situation.

Without the actual “experience”, he often lives in the la la land of an energetic, confident, smart-alecky 11-year old. Experience creates the transformative moment.

And so it goes with the debate about climate change. The transformative moment is upon us. Climate change is ahead of schedule. It’s here Instead of “coming to a theater near you”, it’s playing now with the latest Dolby 3D technology.

The New York Times recently reported that, “The pain has spread across 14 states, from Florida, where severe water restrictions are in place, to Arizona, where ranchers could be forced to sell off entire herds of cattle because they simply cannot feed them. In Texas, where the drought is the worst, virtually no part of the state has been untouched. City dwellers and ranchers have been tormented by excessive heat and high winds. In the Southwest, wildfires are chewing through millions of acres."

Across the country, people and communities are being knocked down by climate related events. And as with my son, the eye-roller, when you get knocked around by something, you take notice. So the bad news may be the good news. With people experiencing a hot, dry dose of climate reality, our transformative moment may be here.

So with the warning shot of extreme weather being heard loud and clear, maybe our collective eye rolling will transform into a collective call for action. This is the chance to organize around corporate accountability. It’s the moment to demand that our political representatives put policies into place that protect the health of the planet. It’s the opportunity for communities to come together and put mitigation and resiliency strategies into place.

Eric Lerner is Health Care Without Harm's US Climate Director.

Heath Care without Harm, an international coalition of more than 500 organizations in 53 countries, is working to transform the health care sector, without compromising patient safety or care, so that it is ecologically sustainable and no longer a source of harm to public health and the environment. To learn more about HCWH's work, visit our website at www.noharm.org, our YouTube channel at HCwithoutharm, and our twitter feed at hcwithoutharm.