We can use our superpower to help end fossil fuel pollution and rise to the challenge of climate change

ABSTRACT

In this commentary, we argue that health professionals can play a pivotal role in accelerating the adoption of public policies that will help communities, nations, and the world end fossil fuel pollution and rise to the challenges of climate change. We briefly describe our previously published research showing that communicating about fossil fuel pollution and the health relevance of climate change has many benefits in building public support for climate action. Most importantly, we make the case that because health professionals, especially medical doctors and other clinicians, are highly trusted, we collectively have a unique opportunity to bring people together across the political continuum to have constructive dialogues about the intertwined problems of fossil fuel pollution and climate change and what to do about them – even in the current hyper-partisan environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Fossil fuel pollution
• climate change
• health professionals
• public trust
• strategic communication

It’s time to end the world’s leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality

Fossil fuel pollution – and the climate change it is creating – is already arguably the world’s leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality [1,2]. These harms may worsen significantly unless humanity successfully rises to the challenge of rapidly decarbonizing the world’s economy.

The necessary solutions are already available thanks, in part, to the clean energy revolution of the past several decades. These solutions are rapidly being adopted in many communities and some nations; now, their adoption must be accelerated worldwide. The solutions – whose adoption can be hastened with supportive policies by local, state, national, and regional governments (e.g. the European Union) – fall along five pathways [3]:

#1: Clean, renewable energy and reduced energy waste/increased energy efficiency

#2: Climate-smart foods, farms, and food systems

#3: Clean and active transportation options

#4: Improved buildings and homes

#5: Improved community designsMoreover, improvements in each of these solution sets are occurring rapidly. Thus, the challenge of decarbonizing and becoming more resilient to climate change is becoming more feasible every year [4].

How health professionals can wield their superpower

Our research, reviewed briefly below, suggests that collectively, health professionals can play a pivotal role in accelerating the adoption of these solutions. However, we must be clear-eyed in recognizing that these solutions have powerful opposition, especially fossil fuel executives, their lobbyists, and the prominent politicians and media outlets under their sway [5]. These opponents are supported by the extraordinary profits of the fossil fuel industry – the richest and most profitable industry the world has ever created – which is currently using all the tools at its disposal to defend its profits at the expense of human health and wellbeing. As Bill Novelli, the former CEO of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids – which played a leading role in bringing the tobacco industry to heel in the late 1990s in the United States – likes to remind us: Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by attacking back.

As health professionals, we can counter the attacks by opponents of climate action because we have a superpower: public trust. Despite the decline in trust in science and public health institutions highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists and medical scientists remain in high regard compared with other prominent groups of people and institutions. Health professionals – especially physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other primary care providers – have the most public trust, while the fossil fuel industry – oil, gas, and coal companies – has little (see below). A poll conducted in 2023 in 31 nations in the Global North and South (including the United States), for example, found that doctors are the most trusted category of people [6]; other global surveys find that nurses and pharmacists are also highly trusted. Moreover, and critical to our argument here, public trust in health professionals as a source of information about climate change is also high. In 2022, we polled Americans and found that primary care doctors, and to a lesser extent, the American Medical Association, are among the most trusted sources of information about global warming; in contrast, oil, gas, and coal companies were the least trusted of all 23 information sources we asked about [7].

In another recent study, we found when ‘concerned health professionals’ identify ‘fossil fuel CEOs, their lobbyists, and the politicians who are in their pockets’ as opposing efforts to address climate change, it significantly strengthens audience members’ support for climate solutions and their intention to advocate for solutions [8]. Moreover, and again critical to our argument, we found that calling out opponents to climate solutions strengthened people’s trust in the health professionals communicating this information. In other words, health professionals’ powers grow when we use our superpower to challenge the opponents of climate action.

Other research conducted by our team over the past five years has revealed an evidence-based narrative that health professionals can use to build public support for the kinds of climate and health solutions mentioned above, thereby helping build the political will necessary to enact the policy solutions. The narrative begins with a brief explanation of the problem – that fossil fuel pollution and climate change harm human health in myriad ways – because most people are largely unaware of the profound health harms associated with fossil fuel pollution and climate change [9–11]. The narrative also focuses on solutions – effective policy solutions of the aforementioned types – because risk communication that includes actionable recommendations is more activating than risk information alone [12]. We’ve also learned that it’s helpful to acknowledge the large and growing number of people concerned about climate change and who want to see effective climate policies enacted [12]. Lastly, as mentioned above, calling out the opponents to climate solutions enhances the effectiveness of the climate/health narrative and builds public trust in the health professionals who communicate the narrative [8].

This evidence-based climate/health narrative works for many reasons. It shows people the personal relevance of fossil fuel pollution and climate change. It brings the benefits of taking action into the present and into our communities – in the form of health benefits that accrue rapidly and primarily for people in the communities that take the actions – unlike the climate benefits of climate policy which take decades to manifest and accrue in small measures worldwide. For example, switching to electric school buses immediately helps children – and everyone else in communities that take the action – with cleaner air. The focus on immediate, local health benefits helps to side-step the iron law of behavioral economics, which dampens enthusiasm for climate solutions: people are reluctant to invest resources (time, money, etc.) in opportunities that take a long time to pay off, and that pay off primarily for others.

Lastly, and importantly, our research has revealed that the climate/health narrative is at least as compelling – and in some instances more compelling – for people in the political center and political right as for those on the left [10–12]. People on the left already tend to be very concerned about climate change, while the same is often not true of people on the right. This means that health professionals, perhaps uniquely, can bring people across the political continuum together to have constructive dialogues about the problems of fossil fuel pollution and climate change and what we want to do about it – even in the current hyper-partisan environment. In effect, we can help depolarize the issue of climate change and move our nations forward to address it constructively.

An invitation and call to action

What we are recommending – indeed, what we are inviting you to do with us – is to work together in using our trusted voices to communicate the evidence-based climate/health narrative whenever and wherever possible. Doing so has the potential to be transformative in moving America and other nations forward in addressing the fossil fuel pollution and climate crises, which have created a health crisis. By educating the public and policymakers about the health harms of fossil fuels and climate change, advocating for effective policies that will protect human health and the health of our climate, identifying the opponents of these policies, and asking people who are concerned to join together in taking action with the large and growing number of people like them who are also concerned, we can help build the public and political will necessary to help our nations rise to the challenges of climate change.

One way that we – the authors – have worked together to help the health community address the fossil fuel pollution and climate crises is by helping to organize the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, which, as of mid-2024, has 57 medical society members, 26 state-focused ‘health professionals for climate action’ affiliates, and thousands of individual members. We invite you to join our community at the Consortium (https://medsocietiesforclimatehealth.org) and to encourage your professional societies to join as organizational members. In return, we pledge to provide you with resources that will help you build your superpower as a force for climate and health action.

For readers outside the United States and those who aspire to use their superpower to influence global climate negotiations, we encourage you to join the global community of health professionals organized by the Global Climate and Health Alliance (https://climateandhealthalliance.org/).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors have research and education grant support from the Wellcome Trust, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Energy Foundation, Northlight Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, and Johnson & Johnson.

Notes on contributors

Edward Maibach

Edward Maibach (Corresponding author)is a Distinguished University Professor and Director of the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. His research illuminates public engagement in climate change and strategies for enhancing it. [email protected]

John Kotcher

John Kotcher is a Research Associate Professor at the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, where he conducts research on science, environmental, and risk communication.

Lisa Patel

Lisa Patel is an Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford Children’s Health and Executive Director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, which is hosted by the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.