Pollution, Climate change, and Global Public Health: Social Justice and the Common Good

Abstract

The author discusses the health effects of pollution and climate change to planetary health, and examines the distribution of their impacts through the lens of social justice. Pollution is the largest environmental cause of disease, disability, and death–whether one considers pollution in air, oceans, and soil or caused by chemicals. At the same time, global climate change has numerous negative effects on the planet’s ecosystems, and multiple adverse effects on human health are enhanced by pollution. Furthermore, both pollution and climate change disproportionately affect the poor and the vulnerable–and, among them, children and people living in the Global South and in poor communities worldwide. Hence, pollution, poverty, poor health, and lack of social justice are closely intertwined.