Clinicians for Climate Action New Jersey
Healing Our Planet,
Protecting Our Patients
10/24/24 "The Air They Breathe" Webinar
Please join us on October 24th at 12 PM (ET) for a conversation with Dr. Debra Hendrickson about her new book - subtitled "A Pediatrician on the Front Lines of Climate change." Co-sponsored by the VT Climate and Health Alliance, and NH Health Climate. Click here for more information.
Our Mission
Our mission is to promote clean energy policies and programs that will protect public health and reduce the impact of climate change on New Jersey's communities. We work to educate policymakers, healthcare professionals, and the public on the health benefits of clean energy, and we advocate for ideas that will reduce carbon pollution, and expand investment in clean energy and energy efficiency.
Carbon Pollution and Our Health
“The evidence is overwhelming: climate change endangers human health.
Solutions exist and we need to act decisively to change this trajectory.
Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General
In the mid-1980's, the Director of NASA's Institute for Space Studies, Dr. James Hansen, began testifying before the US Congress about the fact that carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels was radically altering the Earth's atmosphere - a change that would, if left unchecked, create massive shifts in weather patterns across the planet. Fast forward to 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that climate change had become the greatest threat to human health in the 21st century. Every major medical and health professional organization in the United States has since adopted a similar position.
Besides the devastating impacts on the health of NJ citizens, common sense says that if we do not accelerate our response to this threat, the financial costs to our communities will grow exponentially - further burdening while our already troubled health care system.
As healthcare professionals, we hold the position that society has a moral obligation to reduce carbon pollution as quickly as possible. As is being demonstrated every day in New Jersey and across the nation, those actions will yield myriad benefits - including cleaner air, protection of public health, creation of family-sustaining local jobs for low- and medium-income workers, and energy independence. There can be only one conclusion - implementing an equitable clean energy transition must be a top priority for all of us.
To learn more about the national movement of health professionals doing this work, read this essay. Also, read this to learn about great work that NJ's Dr. Elizabeth Cerceo has been doing.