(Revised Discussion Board)

Abstract

           In “Hurricane, Fire, Covid-19: Disasters Expose the Hard Reality of Climate Change,” Christopher Flavelle and Henry Fountain effectively convey the significance of recent climate catastrophes, namely the occurrence of the Apple Fire and Hurricane Isaias. That said, the authors shed light on the relevance of the latter disaster. As an inevitable consequence of warming ocean temperatures, this is the first time nine storms have occurred so early into the average hurricane season (June 1st to November 30th) in the Atlantic. Interestingly, I noticed that the authors of the aforementioned article avoid too much analytical depth in the significance of these storms for two reasons. Firstly, not much analysis is needed to recognize what these climate disasters mean in terms of climate change and societal sustainability. The scarce resources America’s economy is founded upon ultimately prove society to be, considering the current means of living which are highly dependent upon the combustion of fossil fuels, unsustainable. Secondly, worsening storms are not the only concerns governments and economies are pressured by since climate change spurs other types of climate disasters that require governments to respond promptly, such as pandemics and rapidly spreading wildfires. As such, given that the effects of climate change are varied and wide-reaching, and that efforts to reduce humanity’s carbon footprint have run stagnant in America’s currently polarized political climate, it is reasonable to conclude that events like the Apple Fire in California, which burned 33,424 acres, and the Mendocino Complex Fire in 2018, which burned almost half a million acres, continue to burden the economy. 

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           In Margaret Atwood’s “Time capsule found on the dead planet” (2009), Atwood theorizes that if we continue on the path we are on, we will experience the demise of human civilization as we know it. In the text, Atwood chooses to convey a fictional story of our world and our influence on it through a list that demonstrates the progression of human civilization in ages, beginning with gods, leading to the creation of money, and ending with desolation. By writing this story in the form of a list, the author transforms a concept most people are familiar with—climate change—into not only a tale of a failing civilization, but a prediction of the reader’s future, thus making an emotional appeal that engages the reader and personalizes the subject to that reader. In the first age, Atwood depicts the beginnings of humanity as consisting of the creation of gods, the first step we took (mythologizing nature) towards a heightened sense of self-awareness specific to humans. Atwood notes that we “carved them out of wood; there was still such a thing as wood, then” (Atwood 1). The author makes sure to include the second clause as a means of alluding to the deforestation of what Aldo Leopold says is the larger community (the biosphere) to which we all belong, then and now. In Atwood’s fourth age, she notes that humanity has created deserts of many kinds, where nothing grew. She states, “Some were made of cement, some were made of various poisons, some of baked Earth” (Atwood 4). 

           As an aspiring surgeon, possibly of the cardiothoracic field, I believe the previously mentioned quote is relevant to my desired career. The health sector is responsible for approximately 10% of total energy consumption, which makes sense since “An average US hospital uses 31 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity and 103,600 Btu of natural gas per square foot annually” (bizenergyadvisor 2021). Additionally, it is a well-known fact among the scientific community that the United States’ health sector single-handedly contributes to about ten percent of the total annual carbon emissions of the United States itself. According to healthaffairs.org “in 2011 alone it pumped out 655 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs)” (Shankar; Ahsanuddin 2019). Much of the health sector’s contribution to pollution is resultant from many factors: chemical usage; energy demand; food supply; indirect air pollution; waste production, and water consumption. Many housekeeping and sterilizing agents, as well as detergents, used to ensure the cleanliness of hospitals and prevention of infection transmission are harmful both to patients and the air surrounding the hospital. As these agents are consistently released into the atmosphere, they reduce air quality, and water quality since air and water freely exchange atmospheric molecules as well as fine particulate matter. Any local parks may be harmed in that the chemicals, as they travel through the wind and set in soil, act both as eroding agents and chemicals harmful to plants and/or animals. While this is not immediately concerning, the long-term effects are more obvious. Additionally, hospitals require a massive supply of energy, meaning, more often than not, factories and power plants are not usually too distant from hospitals. These facilities contribute largely to the reduction of air quality and emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, toxic or not. With hospitals being open 24 hours a day 365 days a year, they only amplify the previously mentioned facilities’ contribution to the alteration of the land, water, and air we depend on. The modes of transportation patients and employees take to receive care, obviously don’t help the situation, not to mention the fact that all the supplies used by hospitals must be properly packaged and shipped—or, in other words, with the insurmountable supply of cardboard needed to meet hospitals’ demand for properly packaged materials, hospitals depend on deforestation to function. Here is the issue. Hospitals must take a holistic approach to patient care. Just as the economy functions based on short-term benefits, the health sector focuses on immediate patient care and largely neglects the environment’s role in inpatient care. 

           If physicians must take an oath to do no harm, does that right not extend to the natural community upon which patients depend for the best possible quality of living? I don’t suppose a surgeon’s disposable gloves or disposable surgical gowns will go anywhere other than a desert “made of various poisons” (Atwood 4), or, in other words, a toxic wasteland such as a landfill or marine dump. Are the environmental hazards caused by the health sector’s GHG emissions—one-tenth of the U.S.’s total contribution to GHG emissions—an infringement upon that oath? If that is the case, as hospitals continue to pollute the environment, and the risk of illnesses like asthma, cancer, and heart disease rise, especially in areas where the environment is perverted by politicians to oppress minority groups, don’t hospitals simply become ‘body banks’? After all, Flavelle and Fountain listed the COVID-19 pandemic as a climate disaster likely caused by the effects of deforestation, which the health industry cannot deny since it endured a worldwide ICU bed shortage in 2020. How does one decide who gets to live and who doesn’t? How does one turn away a patient in need because the hospital is ‘at capacity,’ or because the virus was causing strokes, dementia, muscle and nerve damage, encephalitis, vascular disorders, and even immune disorders in some patients? We are depleting our natural resources, and this is only a glimpse of the adverse effects of our actions. In the case of the pandemic, we have been depleting our forests; consequently, we exposed ourselves to a coronavirus that likely inhabited a local forest where it was first contracted.