Skip to main content
University of California Press

Changing Planet, Changing Health

How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do about It

by Paul R. Epstein (Author), Dan Ferber (Author), Jeffrey Sachs (Foreword by)
Publication Date: Apr 2011
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: Include US and Territories, Canada
Pages: 368
ISBN: 9780520272637
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 23 b/w photographs, 17 line illustrations, 2 maps

About the Book

Climate change is now doing far more harm than marooning polar bears on melting chunks of ice—it is damaging the health of people around the world. Brilliantly connecting stories of real people with cutting-edge scientific and medical information, Changing Planet, Changing Health brings us to places like Mozambique, Honduras, and the United States for an eye-opening on-the-ground investigation of how climate change is altering patterns of disease. Written by a physician and world expert on climate and health and an award-winning science journalist, the book reveals the surprising links between global warming and cholera, malaria, lyme disease, asthma, and other health threats. In clear, accessible language, it also discusses topics including Climategate, cap-and-trade proposals, and the relationship between free markets and the climate crisis. Most importantly, Changing Planet, Changing Health delivers a suite of innovative solutions for shaping a healthy global economic order in the twenty-first century.

About the Author

Paul R. Epstein, MD, MPH, (1943–2011) was Associate Director of the Center for Health and Global Environment at Harvard Medical School and a medical doctor trained in tropical health. He contributed to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Dan Ferber is a contributing correspondent for Science magazine. His feature articles have appeared in many publications, including Popular Science, Audubon, and Nature Conservancy.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Foreword by Jeffrey Sachs

Introduction
1 Mozambique
2 The Mosquito’s Bite
3 Sobering Predictions
4 Every Breath You Take
5 Harvest of Trouble
6 Sea Change
7 Forests in Trouble
8 Storms and Sickness
9 The Ailing Earth
10 Gaining Green by Going Green
11 Healthy Solutions
12 Of Rice and Tractors
13 Rewriting the Rules

Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

Reviews

“The authors issue an alarming warning that climate change not only threatens health directly, by spreading insect born diseases and reducing air quality, but indirectly as well. They cite Githeko's and other ground-breaking studies proving that a rise in ocean temperatures reinvigorates previously dormant cholera in estuaries, swamps, and oceans. . . . An eye-opener.”
Publishers Weekly
“Because human health is 'the bottom line' at which the many adverse consequences of climate change will converge, Changing Planet, Changing Health is an excellent corrective for climate-change myopia.”
Nature
“A comprehensive read on climate change, its environmental and health impacts and the actions that can be taken against it—as seen through a health professional's eyes. . . . A harrowing look at the road ahead that should urge immediate, proactive change.”
Kirkus Reviews
“An engaging book on climate change and public health.”
American Scientist
“Makes it clear that the health threats from climate change are here, and need immediate coordinated effort to keep in check.”
E! The Environmental Magazine
“Throughout, this book emphasizes complex interactions and highlights unintended consequences. It identifies solutions—some drastic—and refutes, with impressive evidence, political/financial efforts to deny climate change and discredit climate scientists. . . . Highly Recommended.”
CHOICE
“This book provides a useful and interesting introduction to this still unsettled segment of the climate debate.”
Natural Hazards Observer
“Absorbing and informative.”
National Catholic Reporter
“If ever there was a book that ought to be on everybody’s reading bucket list this is it. But read it now rather
than later, since health and global environment expert Epstein and award-winning science journalist Ferber
believe there is still, albeit limited, time to begin mitigating the effects of human actions on the changing
climate."
Booklist
“If ever there was a book that ought to be on everybody’s reading bucket list this is it. But read it now rather
than later since health and global environment expert Epstein and award-winning science journalist Ferber
believe there is still, albeit limited, time to begin mitigating the effects of human actions on the changing
climate."
Booklist
“This eye-opening book reveals how climate change alters patterns of disease and contributes to many of the world’s most serious human health threats.”
Taste For Life Magazine
"Changing Planet, Changing Health is a landmark book that will raise our consciousness about how we should respond to a growing emergency and save lives. Dr. Paul Epstein and journalist Dan Ferber offer stunning revelations about the ways that the climate crisis is jeopardizing food security and accessibility to drinking water while propelling disease vectors that are threatening public health worldwide. This book, the first to solely focus on the connection between the climate crisis and its damaging health effects, sounds a clarion call that shows how we can heal the earth, and ourselves."—Al Gore

“Climate change has brought a new imperative to global health efforts worldwide as the ‘changing planet’ both contributes to the spread of disease and worsens existing inequities. We must be ambitious in our response and heed the personal, political, economic, and institutional advice so keenly prescribed here by Paul Epstein and Dan Ferber. Our collective failure to intervene, or even to understand, portends disaster. But this volume also shows us just how much we can do to slow or arrest these adverse trends.”—Paul Farmer, MD, author of Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor and Co-founder, Partners in Health

"You'll never find a clearer or smarter explanation of one of the toughest problems the world faces as the Holocene ebbs and the warming era begins."—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

"Paul Epstein has long been at the forefront in alerting the public and our leaders on the many ways our lives and health are threatened by climate change. Together with journalist Dan Ferber, they have now written the book on the health effects of global warming. From malaria-carrying mosquitoes entering new regions now warm enough to support their life cycle to asthma triggered by higher carbon dioxide concentrations, to lives lost by extreme weather, Changing Planet, Changing Health is a vivid reminder of the urgency of the need for action. It can only be hoped that this sweeping and articulate book will trigger a renewed focus on this crucial challenge at a time when so many are distracted by other events."—Paul Volberding, MD, University of California, San Francisco

"This valuable and insightful book provides, in highly readable form, the most basic reason for concern over human source change in the climate system—the impact this change has on our health."—Paul Andrew Mayewski, Climate Change Institute, University of Maine

“Climate change isn't just 'inconvenient'— it kills. Bravo to Paul Epstein and Dan Ferber for laying out a clear explication. Deny the heat wave around you? OK, but brace yourself for the hospital bills.”—Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize winning writer and author of The Coming Plague

Changing Planet, Changing Health is an illuminating, important, and deeply sobering book.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change

"As compelling as a detective novel, Changing Planet, Changing Health reveals the important—and often unnerving—links between climate and survival in a world in a world in which we are watching our known environment slip away. This is a vital story, and authors Paul Epstein and Dan Ferber have told it beautifully, so that their exploration of human behavior and consequences is wonderfully readable as well as being wonderfully smart."—Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

Awards

  • CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2011, American Library Association

Media

Interview with the author.