The health care industry is focused on providing high quality care for its patients. But making and keeping people well involves more than just treating individuals: it requires an environment that enables people to enjoy a healthy lifestyle. Today, that environment is under siege.
The effects of climate change are already being felt and could have a devastating impact on the health of everyone around the globe. A leading medical journal, The Lancet, recently stated that warming temperatures could erase 50 years of health advances.
California once again has the opportunity to take a leadership role in protecting the environment and reversing the harmful effects of climate change.
The state legislature is debating two critical bills aimed at further cutting the state’s carbon pollution, reducing its dependence on fossil fuel and advancing California’s clean tech economy. The first bill, SB 32, extends the landmark AB 32 legislation, putting in place a greenhouse gas reduction target of 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. The second, SB 350, sets ambitious goals for California by 2030, including doubling energy efficiency in existing buildings, obtaining half its electricity from renewable sources and reducing petroleum use by 50%.
Moving forward on these measures would have enormous benefits. By 2030, the state’s clean transportation policies can save more than $8bn in health care costs through fewer asthma attacks, respiratory and cardiac hospitalizations, and premature deaths from poor air quality.
Dignity Health, a 20-state network of nearly 9,000 physicians, 56,000 employees and more than 400 care centers, is endorsing the legislation because it recognizes that the health of humans is linked to the health of the planet. Above all, these policies will help to prevent human suffering.
But other key sectors of the economy recognize the importance of these initiatives too. Dozens of California companies, including Levi Strauss & Co, The Gap and Autodesk, are working actively with Dignity Health to promote these initiatives. They know that a better environment is good for their customers and good for the state’s business and social health.
Clean energy is good economics. As California pursues a greener future, growth is up, unemployment is down, and manufacturing goods exports continue to rise.
California, the seventh-largest economy in the world, is creating the most advanced energy jobs and getting the most venture capital money in the US because, as a state, we are committed to being the model for America’s clean energy future.
Critics of the bills will suggest that California can’t stop climate change by itself, and that making these changes will only impose costs on us that won’t be shared by the rest of the US or the world.
But the Golden State has proven that argument wrong before. Its as 20th-century initiatives to fight air pollution and improve automobile gas mileage became a model as others recognized the benefits and adopted similar policies.
Going forward, California can adopt the proposed legislation and be the 21st-century global leader on the environment. As countries focus on upcoming international climate negotiations in Paris later this year, moving these bills forward can send a strong message that the US will be at the forefront of battling climate change and protecting human health.
