This commentary is by Chellie Nayar, a rising fourth-year medical student and a member of the Vermont Climate and Health Alliance, and Dr. David Rand, an internal medicine physician on the steering committee of the Vermont Climate and Health Alliance.
One of us is a 27-year-old approaching her final year of medical school; the other is 45-year-old internal medicine physician and father of a young child. Despite these differences, we feel a shared sense of horror and urgency as we watch our patients’ lives be dramatically and painfully altered by the catastrophic impact of climate change.
During the floods and the wildfire smoke of last summer, the more junior of us remembers a patient she met while rotating through the emergency department treating patients with psychiatric crises. This patient’s struggles began with the flooding of her apartment. She couldn’t find alternative housing and was forced to stay put as her home became overrun with mold and infested with insects. Previously active in the community, her neighbors noted with alarm dramatic changes including weight loss and disabling mental health problems. After a thorough workup, it became clear that the extreme stress of losing her home caused her health problems.
During the same period, the more senior of us remembers the elderly woman admitted to the intensive care unit in shock. The flooding destroyed her home, and she was forced to move from motel to motel. Separated from her belongings and the neighbors who supported and anchored her, she became unable to care for her complex medical conditions and landed in the emergency room. Thanks to the ICU team she survived, but remained completely unmoored.
These cases are not unique. In Vermont and across the country, we and our colleagues are seeing more and more patients whose lives have been upended by flooding, heat, fires and myriad other environmental and social problems caused by climate change. For some, their problems began when businesses they worked for, or businesses they ran, were forced to shut down. For many, as their living and/or work situations deteriorated, their ability to cope succumbed to the enormity of their challenges. Others have suffered significant kidney, heart and lung damage from the heat and smoke. As clinicians, we can offer medical treatment but those impacted by climate change need so much more.
Meanwhile, as countless court cases are demonstrating, fossil fuel companies and their scientists have been accurately predicting for decades that their products would cause the climate to change, ultimately leading to exactly this sort of devastating harm. Despite their own dire predictions, the fossil fuel industry misled the public, denied the realities of climate change, and obstructed efforts to decrease its impact. At the same time, fossil fuel companies continue to bring in record profits. In 2023, the profits of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP exceeded $100 billion. The CEO of Chevron noted that, “In 2023, we returned more cash to shareholders and produced more oil and natural gas than any year in the company’s history.”
The economic burden of climate change is staggering and growing rapidly. According to Gov. Scott’s office, last summer’s flooding left behind a billion dollars in “response, recovery, and social costs”. A study published in 2020 found that the Vermont state government was running more than 110 programs and projects created to respond to climate change. No one has tallied up all the costs to Vermont taxpayers, but common sense says that the numbers will be very significant. While we are still treating the casualties of last summer’s flooding, we need to act urgently to decrease harms that will come from future weather-related catastrophes. We must focus on efforts to adapt to climate change, which, for example, include helping farmers respond when their fields flood, installing energy efficient cooling and air filtration systems in schools to mitigate the impacts of extreme heat and wildfire smoke or moving homes away from flood plains.
Our Legislature just passed the Climate Superfund Act which is designed to fund climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts by holding large fossil fuel companies financially responsible for the massive damage they have knowingly wrought. The bill won’t solve all the issues we will face from climate change, but it will help. Those Vermonters who will suffer the most from climate change — the elderly, the young, underrepresented groups and those with limited financial resources — deserve better. Our children and grandchildren deserve better. All Vermonters deserve better.
We, along with many of our colleagues in Vermont’s medical and health community, urge Gov. Phil Scott to sign this bill into law. And if he chooses to veto it, we urge the General Assembly to override that veto.
