Dr. Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, was one of the nation's pre-eminent experts on the public-health effects of climate change.
People don't just want to know how climate change affects polar bears. They want to know what's at stake for them.
Starting in the early 1990s, Dr. Epstein linked climate change to the probable rise of West Nile virus, encephalitis, and other infectious diseases, to more ragweed, more noxious algae in western Lake Erie, and higher incidences of asthma and other smog-triggered respiratory ailments.
He showed how coal-fired power plants put particles in the air that carry pollen and other allergens deep into the lungs, possibly explaining the worldwide asthma epidemic since 1980.
Dr. Epstein also was one of Nobel laureate and former Vice President Al Gore's advisers on the Oscar-winning 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
"Paul was truly a pioneer in the area of climate change and infectious disease," Mr. Gore recently told the New York Times.
The scientific consensus on climate change is rock solid. Those who still have doubts should follow the money trail.
Major corporations acknowledge the realities of climate change. Several have helped the U.S. Action Climate Partnership lobby for a moderate strategy to reduce emissions. The belief is that climate legislation is inevitable, and the business world has been held hostage by continued anxiety over how to address it. Read the full report here.
Source: by Tom Henry, Blade Editorial Writer and Columnist, toledoBlade.com.
