It is exactly what you would expect the Biden administration to focus on as Hurricane Ida continues to ravage Louisiana, out of control fi...
It is exactly what you would expect the Biden administration to focus on as Hurricane Ida continues to ravage Louisiana, out of control fires are burning in California and America is turning tail frantically fleeing Afghanistan under ISIS-K fire and where American citizens are being turned away from the airport.
Joe Biden could not be bothered to answer questions on Afghanistan during a morning interview Monday. He probably was told it is an off limits topic. Too bad the anchor didn’t ask about Biden’s new bureaucratic office he is forming today.
Apparently the United States needs an Office of Climate Change and Health Equity which according to the New York Times, the administration will announce Monday.
According to NYT, the office is necessary to “to address the health consequences of climate change and their disproportionate effects on poor communities.”
It would seem that “deadly heat waves,” “evidence showing that wildfire smoke may contribute to premature births” and an “understanding how planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels also affect human health” makes this office critical.
According to Aaron Bernstein, interim director of the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, “The health of the American people is falling through the cracks because there hasn’t been a targeted focus on climate risk.”
“This is the opportunity to plug that hole,” Bernstein said.
The new office will be under the Department of Health and Human Services.
The White House national climate change advisor, Gina McCarthy said, “Climate change is fundamentally a health threat.”
She also said one of the objectives for the new office is to “encourage doctors to talk to their patients about protecting themselves from things like heat waves, wildfire smoke and other air pollution.”
I am sure this will help.
Even more important is for the office to obtain an understanding of “how extreme weather affects older people as well as communities of color.”
“There’s a saying that if white people catch a cold, Black people catch pneumonia,” said Beverly Malone, chief executive of the National League for Nursing. “Health equity has a lot to do with where you live, and we have understood the linkage.”
Biden is proposing $3 million to pay for this most important new office next year. Congress will have to approve it so it will surely pass. What’s another $3 million in a $3.5 trillion spending bill anyway?
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