Early in my career as a primary care physician, I found myself steering my car through driving rain around downed power lines and fallen tree branches for a shift in urgent care. I was already nervous about my new role. Having a hurricane didn’t help. I remember feeling overwhelmed and inadequate when I had to refer a patient to the already overburdened ER. The deep wound a roof shingle had carved in their scalp was too much for me. Hurricane Bob was a Category 3 hurricane and it took 18 people’s lives and caused today’s equivalent of ~$3.5 billion in damages. The fear, the injuries, and the losses all fell on the local community.

That was decades ago. Nowadays—from Texas floods, to Western wildfires, to deadly heatwaves across the Midwest and Northeast—communities across the country are paying the price. Severe storms are more frequent because of climate change caused by burning fossil fuels. Extreme weather events are causing traumatic injuries, post-traumatic stress disorders, medication shortages, and death. Heatwaves are more frequent and more dangerous, causing heart attacks, asthma attacks, kidney failure, and death. Floods are ravaging our towns, roads, bridges, and farms, overwhelming local businesses and thinly stretched municipal budgets. Public health and infrastructure costs from these crises are mounting. And fossil fuel air pollution—accounting for ~95% of total air pollution in the state—currently kills over 2,700 residents each year in Massachusetts through heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, and chronic lung illness.

Meanwhile, the petrochemical corporations—who’ve knowingly fueled the climate crisis and spent tens of millions of dollars to sow disinformation—got off scot-free.

As a doctor, I can treat people for asthma from air pollution and dehydration from heatwaves, but if the root cause is not addressed, countless more will suffer. The enormity of this threat to public health led me to retire from primary care and join with those fighting for clean energy. We urgently need to stop burning fossil fuels, but we must also invest in resilience and adaptation projects, to safeguard Massachusetts communities against the climate harms they are already experiencing—from the flooding and erosion threatening........

© Common Dreams