The Parallel Crises: COVID-19 and Climate Change

As Kaiser Permanente becomes carbon neutral, a look at the opportunities before us to respond to climate crisis

In 2016, Kaiser Permanente promised we would become carbon neutral in 2020. Today, we have fulfilled that long-term promise to our employees, members and communities. Becoming certified as carbon neutral is a proud accomplishment for an organization dedicated to improving the health of our 12.4 million members and for the 68 million people who live in the communities we serve. To create a healthier, more sustainable path forward, we must address the inseparable issues of climate health and human health as one.

Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has dominated our collective consciousness this year and is an extraordinarily urgent crisis. But the deadly toll of climate change should not be discounted.

The World Health Organization estimates that 4.2 million people die every year as a result of exposure to air pollution from chemical emissions and burning fossil fuels, which is also the primary driver of climate change. From respiratory disease to heat-related illnesses and the devastation of extreme weather events like the wildfires currently raging across the Western U.S., climate change drives poor health and mortality. 

As part of our pledge to do no harm, the medical and public health communities must be part of the solution.

While climate crisis is broader and has been impacting human health longer than COVID-19, the public response in the U.S. to the pandemic is an eerie reflection of our ongoing lack of action against climate change.

As with COVID-19, climate change presents the parallel challenge of convincing people that the problem is real, that the consequences are serious and that we must take actions individually – but more importantly, globally and systematically – to turn the tide.

Luckily, public health professionals are good at this. We have convinced millions of people to quit smoking or never to start; and decades ago we got the entire auto industry on board with seatbelts and airbags. It seems unthinkable now, but convincing people of the benefit of basic sanitation was once a tough sell. Fortunately, public health got it done.

We also need the expertise of the medical community to decipher the connections between climate change and COVID-19 susceptibility.

We are beginning to see the ways that climate change may have caused disproportionate vulnerability among people of color and lower-income individuals to COVID-19. For example, the pollution from fossil-fueled power plants and refineries disproportionately impacts Black and low-income communities, creating conditions that are connected to higher mortality rates from COVID-19. Unsurprisingly, poor lung health caused by decades of breathing polluted air makes fighting off a respiratory illness more difficult.

As climate activist Greta Thunberg recently said, “A crisis is a crisis.” Our response to these twin crises – climate and COVID-19 – must come quickly and with a full coordinated force, especially because we failed to act early on.

The pandemic and our response to it – or lack thereof – illustrates clearly the challenges and opportunities before us in the face of climate change. By taking bold steps like Kaiser Permanente’s achievement of becoming carbon neutral, we can all do the hard work to protect our future.