Today, approximately two billion children breathe toxic air at levels exceeding standards set by the World Health Organization, causing immediate and long-term physical and mental health effects. Nearly every child around the world is at risk from at least one climate-related shock such as severe heat, flooding, drought, air pollution, forest fires, water scarcity, and displacement. Air pollution and climate change, largely driven by emissions from fossil fuel, are widening inequality in children's health. From urban centers in the United States to remote villages in the furthest corners of Asia, we are seeing the effects of our inaction on climate change affecting the next generation--even those still in utero. The global transition away from fossil fuel to a low carbon economy creates a major opportunity for the health and future of our children, but only if we all take action. Children's Health and the Peril of Climate Change brings to light the mental and physical harms to children's health inflicted by climate change and its root cause--our addiction to fossil fuel. Drawing on the author's extensive expertise in children's environmental health, this essential and thought-provoking text exposes the unique vulnerability of the developing child and the multiple and synergistic effects of climate change and air pollution on child health, especially for disadvantaged children. However, it also shows how all children, regardless of their generational wealth or birth country, are imperiled by climate change. While this book provides specific evidence for the escalating dangers of climate change, it also presents a roadmap to a brighter future with case studies of climate change and air pollution policies that have benefitted children's health and the economy. Through facts and compelling storytelling, Frederica Perera shares the growing power of advocacy by youth, environmental justice, and Indigenous groups. She describes the many solutions now available, highlighting the need for integrated climate and social policies to accelerate the transition into a zero-carbon future. Leveraging the universally shared value of protecting children, Children's Health and the Peril of Climate Change is a call to action to replace denial and despair around climate change with purpose and commitment for a healthier, more sustainable future.

“Let this book immerse you in the many worlds of environmental justice.”—Naomi Klein We are living in a precarious environmental and political moment. In the United States and in the world, environmental injustices have manifested across racial and class divides in devastatingly disproportionate ways. What does this moment of danger mean for the environment and for justice? What can we learn from environmental justice struggles? Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger examines mobilizations and movements, from protests at Standing Rock to activism in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Environmental justice movements fight, survive, love, and create in the face of violence that challenges the conditions of life itself. Exploring dispossession, deregulation, privatization, and inequality, this book is the essential primer on environmental justice, packed with cautiously hopeful stories for the future.

A timely, revelatory first look into the impact climate change has on children—the greatest moral crisis humanity faces today—by a pediatrician in the fastest warming city in America. Wildfires, hurricanes, and heat waves make headlines. But what is happening in Debra Hendrickson’s clinic tells another story of this strange and unsettling time. Hendrickson is a pediatrician in Reno, Nevada—the fastest warming city in the United States, where ash falls like snow during summer wildfires. In The Air They Breathe, Dr. Hendrickson recounts patients she’s seen who were harmed by worsening smoke, smog, and pollen; two boys in Arizona, stricken by record-setting heat while hiking; children who fled for their lives from Hurricane Harvey and the Tubbs Fire; and a little girl whose life was forever altered by the Zika virus outbreak in 2016. The climate crisis is a health crisis, and it is a health crisis, first and foremost, for children. Children’s bodies are interwoven with and shaped by their surroundings. As the planet warms and their environment changes, children’s health is at risk. The youngest are especially vulnerable because their brain, lungs, and other organs are forming and growing every day, and because their physiology is so different from that of adults. Childhood has always been a risky period of life; throughout history, babies and children have met peril, from polio to famine, from cyclones to war. Yet they have never quite had to face, in quite this way, the potential loss of the future itself. The Air They Breathe is not just about the health impacts of global warming, but something more: a soul-stirring reminder of our moral responsibility to our children, and their profound connections to this unique and irreplaceable world.

No environmental issue triggers such feelings of hopelessness as global climate change. Many areas of the world, including regions of the United States, have experienced a wide range of unusually dramatic weather events recently. Much climate change analysis forecasts horrors of biblical proportions, such as massive floods, habitat loss, species loss, and epidemics related to warmer weather. Such accounts of impending disaster have helped trigger extreme reactions, wherein some observers simply dismiss global climate change as, at the very worst, a minor inconvenience requiring modest adaptation. It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that an American federal government known for institutional gridlock has accomplished virtually nothing in this area in the last decade. Policy inertia is not the story of this book, however. Statehouse and Greenhouse examines the surprising evolution of state-level government policies on global climate change. Environmental policy analyst Barry Rabe details a diverse set of innovative cases, offering detailed analysis of state-level policies designed to combat global warming. The book explains why state innovation in global climate change has been relatively vigorous and why it has drawn so little attention thus far. Rabe draws larger potential lessons from this recent flurry of American experience. Statehouse and Greenhouse helps to move debate over global climate change from bombast to the realm of what is politically and technically feasible.

Pulmonary physicians and scientists currently have minimal capacity to respond to climate change and its impacts on health. The extent to which climate change influences the prevalence and incidence of respiratory morbidity remains largely undefined. However, evidence is increasing that climate change does drive respiratory disease onset and exacerbation as a result of increased ambient and indoor air pollution, desertification, heat stress, wildfires, and the geographic and temporal spread of pollens, molds and infectious agents. Preliminary research has revealed climate change to have potentially direct and indirect adverse impacts on respiratory health. Published studies have linked climate change to increases in respiratory disease, including the following: changing pollen releases impacting asthma and allergic rhinitis, heat waves causing critical care-related diseases, climate driven air pollution increases, exacerbating asthma and COPD, desertification increasing particulate matter (PM) exposures, and climate related changes in food and water security impacting infectious respiratory disease through malnutrition (pneumonia, upper respiratory infections). High level ozone and ozone exposure has been linked to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, lung cancer, and acute lower respiratory infection. Global Climate Change and Public Health is an important new volume based on the research, findings, and discussions of US and international experts on respiratory health and climate change. This volume addresses issues of major importance to respiratory health and fills a major gap in the current literature. The ATS Climate Change and Respiratory Health Workshop was held in New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 15, 2010. The purpose of the meeting was to address the threat to global respiratory health posed by climate change. The workshop was attended by domestic and international experts as well as representatives of international respiratory societies and key US federal agencies. Dr. Pinkerton and Dr. Rom, the editors of this title, were co-chairs of the Climate Change Workshop and Symposium.

Conservation Science and Advocacy for a Planet in Peril: Speaking Truth to Power helps equip scientists working on environmental and sustainability challenges with new tactics for success. Global efforts and cooperation by member states of environmental conventions have steadily increased but lack efficient and scalable mechanisms of translating conservation science to policy. The gap between science and policy is growing and very little time remains before the climate change and biodiversity lossess trigger widespread disruptions of the planet's life support systems. This book covers these important topics, providing a must read for environmental and conservation scientists, climate change activists, students, social scientists, economic professionals, sustainable businesses and policymakers. - Provides an unprecedented collection of local, regional, and national case studies from scientists and practitioners engaged in outreach to decision makers and the public - Covers personal accounts that bring science into policymaking, providing usable guidelines for those working to bridge this gap - Includes the requisite information needed for effective communications and campaign strategies by sharing lessons learned

The long-term consequences of COVID-19 have been tough for children around the world, but even more so for young children already in humanitarian crisis, whether due to conflict, natural disasters, or economic and political upheaval. This book investigates how organizations around the world responded to these dual challenges, identifying solutions, and learning opportunities to help to support young children in ongoing and future crises. Drawing on research and voices from the Global South, this book showcases innovations to mobilize new funds and re-allocate existing resources to protect children during the pandemic. It provides important evidence on understudied and overlooked vulnerable populations, recognizing that researchers from the Global South are best positioned to fill these research gaps, contextualize findings, and support the uptake and adoption of recommendations by local decision-makers and practitioners in those same contexts. The findings in this book will be important for practitioners, policy makers and donors working in or interested in humanitarian contexts, on early childhood development, or early childhood education. The book will also be useful to students and researchers working in these fields. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.