Lambert said: I wish “resilience” wasn’t one of those words. But it is. Like, “You do you.”
Written by Dr. David Introcaso, a health research and policy consultant. Originally posted on Undark.
Building Climate Resilience (the ability to adapt to climate disasters) defines the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ response to the climate crisis. HHS’s stated purpose is to: Climate Action Plan“To strengthen resilience and adaptability to climate change across HHS’s operations.” The department’s primary climate-related program effort is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Building resilience to climate impactsOr, BRACE “allows state health officials to develop strategies and programs to help communities prepare for the health impacts of climate change.”
It is concerning that HHS has adopted resilience as a policy without explanation or public discussion. In short, building resilience is an inconsistent response. that much A federal agency responsible for protecting the health of Americans in the face of climate disasters.
Ecologists first used resilience in the 1970s to describe the ability of nonhuman biological systems to adapt to hazards or disasters. The concept has since been transformed. Federal Government define Simply put, “the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, prepare for, endure, and recover quickly from disruption.” Resilience now presupposes the ability of organizations, communities, and individuals to quickly return to business or daily life after a disaster. Resilience fosters the growth of a culture of preparedness, as a future defined by endless cycles of disaster and recovery requires constant adaptation. Building healthcare climate resilience means embracing, withstanding, or recovering from air pollution caused by fossil fuel combustion and anthropogenic warming.
For health policymakers, building climate resilience presents a number of daunting challenges.
Resilience fails to recognize that the human health harms of the climate crisis are numerous, persistent, and potentially impacting everyone, everywhere, all the time. For example, the World Health Organization concluded in 2022 that: 99 percent 90% of the world’s population is exposed to air pollution that threatens health. More specifically, Recent research For more than 60 million Medicare beneficiaries, it concluded that there is no safe exposure limit for chronic effects from particulate matter (2.5 micrometers or less in diameter), which is primarily a result of fossil fuel combustion. Another 2022 study Almost 60 percent Some known infectious diseases could be exacerbated by risks or pathways associated with climate change.
The 2022 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Evaluation Report It concluded that unless current greenhouse gas emissions are reduced rapidly in the short term, prospects for climate resilient development will become increasingly limited, especially if average global warming exceeds 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Did not decrease sharply. they Highest on record. And global warming for the 12 consecutive months ending in June Average 1.64 Celsius. As record high temperatures continue for several months in a row, the World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General said: announce In March, “WMO Community Sounds Red Alert to the World.” In June, speech“We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell,” the UN secretary-general concluded.
The fundamental problem with resilience is this: Brad Evans and Julian Reed, Sarah BrackeAnd others have explained it more than a decade ago. It is not a solution, it is a cause. Resilience thinking assumes that risk or disaster is a pervasive and already realized fact. Climate disaster is made acceptable, outside our control. Resilience therefore makes us anxious about the future or denies us the ability to imagine a future beyond climate breakdown. In a situation where our lives are in perpetual danger and unsafe, resilience is a form of subjectivation that denies human agency.
Those who are least resilient to climate change are, moreover, minority groups. They bear the greatest climate penalty. They are forced to accept the conditions of their own vulnerability. In effect, resilience creates a permanent climate risk group. Climate Apartheid It is a given.
Living a life permanently exposed to climate catastrophe, forever having to adapt or react to climate threats, is, in a word, exhausting. As Roy Scranton puts it in his book:Learning to Die in the Anthropocene“We continue to act as if tomorrow will be like yesterday, becoming less and less prepared for each new disaster, and increasingly desperately investing in a life we cannot sustain,” is, unsurprisingly, the title of Ajay Singh Chaudhary’s recent study on climate politics.The Tired People of Earth.” Chaudhary said, “Resilience is an absolute imperative of normal business and it is what crisis managers do to buy time. For others, resilience is Tiresome.”
Resilience itself can be a major threat. If resilience succeeds, it can become indistinguishable from the climate disaster it was intended to overcome. For example, in the health sector. Medicaid And other payers have recently decided to start paying for air conditioning, and perhaps the carbon pollution it produces.
In essence, resilience teaches apathy, fatalism, and distorted optimism because it makes it impossible to achieve the future you want or to imagine a world that changes. Life lacks a sense of coherence. As medical sociologist Aaron Antonovsky puts it: Health creation. In doing so, resilience nullifies or at least weakens resistance or efforts to prevent climate catastrophe. Resistance is futile, because climate threats and catastrophes are once again inevitable.
Resilience is an attractive political policy because it gives permission for a world to be hit by climate disasters. Human life, like that of nonhuman life, is a continuous process of adaptation to disasters. As Evans and Reed wrote in 2013, policymakers “want us to abandon the dream of achieving security and accept risk as a condition of the possibility of living in the future.” Ecological disasters are seen as necessary for our development. word Philosopher Frederic Jameson said, “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of the world.” capitalism.” Chaudhary argued that resilience is an apology for exploitative resource use and environmental destruction. “The obsession with the ideal of resilience only sustains a world that demands it.”
With resilience, there is virtually no climate crisis. We don’t need directed federal funding or strict federal regulations to eliminate GHG emissions. Instead, as Adrienne Buller explains in her 2022 book, “The value of whalesA combination of deregulation and greater prioritization of market efficiency is a better approach to climate policy. Resilience “enables the political imagination to imagine anything but the dismal status quo of politics,” Evan and Reid conclude. Resilience is a commitment to nihilism, meaninglessness, and valueless governance. Chaudhary defines resilience as politically ineffective because it simply “recommends silence and modest austerity.”
For HHS, resilience as a policy explains why the Biden administration has failed to promulgate Medicare or Medicaid regulatory rules. health care industry To reduce GHG emissions or improve climate-related health care—for example, by creating specific climate-related diagnostic codes and quality performance measures. HHS estimates that the health care industry 553 million These emissions produce 610 million metric tons of greenhouse gases each year. Disproportionately harm Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. HHS mission To “improve the health and well-being of all Americans,” the Department of Resilience could simply issue a monthly report. Climate and Health Outlook Predicts the potential harm to public health from unavoidable climate disasters. June ReportHHS’s responsibility is to recognize that “tornadoes can occur anywhere, at any time,” “there are many different types of flooding,” the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season is expected to be “above normal,” and “wildfires impact health in many ways.”
For HHS, climate resilience leaves the department at its own peril. For Americans, we have lost hope.
