Rx: Public Health
We have treatments for climate change. We also have experience helping people and communities make difficult changes. My prescription is to bring the knowledge and practice of public health to the work of putting climate solutions into action.
We do the things one person can't do
Public health works on problems that are too large for any of us to solve alone. We study what shapes behavior. We work on policy and environments. We help communities organize, prevent harm, and create healthier conditions.
Those skills belong in climate action.
We don't all need to become climate scientists. We can bring the expertise we already have in how people and systems change. And we can do that work in ways that leave communities more connected and more capable of the next thing.
Build the conditions for action
There are three connected parts to this work.
First, prepare for local climate impacts. Build climate-resilient communities and make sure our rules and programs can work in changing conditions.
Second, support people who want to reduce emissions. Build policies, environments, and community support that make lower-carbon choices easier. Help people develop confidence that they can participate and make a difference.
Third, bring our experience with policy change, social norms, and movement building to the systems that produce emissions. As we recover and rebuild, look for ways to address the injustices that made some people more vulnerable in the first place.
These are ways of doing the work together, using the skills of the whole field.
Build relational infrastructure
By relational infrastructure, I mean the relationships, trust, and ways of working together that help people do things they could not do alone.
Think about walking a child to school and organizing a walking school bus. Think about installing solar panels on your own roof and working with others on a public building. Think about asking people to run a marathon and creating a training group that helps them get there.
The collective version requires something extra: people knowing one another, learning how to cooperate, and having room to experiment.
We can build that into our work. Invite conversation. Help people build relationships with each other. Share skills and decisions. Make space for what we don't know.
When a project is over, ask what it leaves behind. Have people gained the ability to do something else together? Have we helped create a community with more capacity to care for itself and its place in the world?
What can one person do?
Here is my answer to the question that brings so many of us to this work.
Join something bigger than you
Find people with whom you can act. A neighborhood group, an organization, or an effort at work can give your contribution somewhere to connect with other people's contributions.
Get to know your neighbors
Practice being people who know and can help one another. Make room for the ordinary conversations from which trust and shared work can grow.
Talk about climate change
Bring it into conversation with people in your life. Listen as well as speak. We need places to talk about what worries us, what matters to us, and what we might do together.
Practice the world you want to see
Take part in the ways of living and working you want to become more possible. Practice cooperation. Care for your community and the living world. Learn by doing, with other people.
Make the changes you can sustain
Use Project Drawdown to explore changes that fit your circumstances. Home energy, transportation, and food are places to start.
Do as much as you can while keeping the capacity to build community. We need people who can keep showing up for one another.
How should we live on this changing planet?
Think about a muddy dog. There is a technical solution to cleaning a muddy dog. But if nothing about the dog's habits or surroundings changes, we may be right back where we started.
We need the technologies that reduce emissions. We also need to change the ways we live on the Earth and with each other that keep producing harm.
The way we treat each other is part of the work. We can practice that now, in the communities and projects already around us.