Dr. Sam Myers is a Principal Research Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and founding Director of the Planetary Health Alliance. He joins us now to tell us about the new book he has co-edited: "Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves."
Human activity is driving the fastest changes in our global environment in the history of our species, and these planetary changes threaten the very foundations of human health by affecting the quality of our air and water, the amount and quality of the food we produce, our exposure to infectious disease and natural hazards, even the habitability of the places we live.
Dr. Myers says to address these threats, we need to establish a different trajectory. The good news is that we know how to do everything differently—across every sector we have powerful solutions that can be taken to scale—the question is will we? Planetary Health lays out the science and the politics behind the challenges as well as the potential solutions.