A few years ago, during a visit to Hiroshima, Japan, I attended a speech by a well-known peace activist and Hibakusha — An atomic bomb survivor. On August 6, 1945, Keiko Ogura was 8 years old, living with her family in a house built behind a small hill, just a mile and a half from Ground Zero. She recalled painful memories that shaped the rest of her life. When I spoke with her later, she told me that, while it was important for all survivors to warn others about what they had seen, the testimony of those who were children that day was especially important. “Without showing what happened to a child,” she said, “the world cannot understand.”
I’m a pediatrician in Reno, The fastest warming city When I look into the eyes of the children and infants in my clinic in the US, I am reminded of Keiko Ogura’s words. There is a slow-motion bomb about to explode over their heads, and unless parents understand the urgent policy choice they face this November, these children will carry the pain and suffering of our decisions long after we are gone.
The “bomb” in this case is the billions of tons of carbon pollution that have been released into Earth’s atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels. It has now become a heat-trapping blanket over the planet, and its damage can be seen everywhere. Last month, Reno’s neighborhoods grew quieter as a wave of intense heat It brought a series of days above 100 degrees — unheard of here before — and forced kids indoors, missing out on their usual summer activities. We know what can happen after a summer like this and we kept a wary eye to our west, waiting for the smoke from the next megafire over the Sierra Nevada. It soon arrived: haze from California’s Park fire and Crozier fire is now polluting our air.
We’re not alone. From already hot places like Miami and Las Vegas to normally cool cities like Missoula, Mont., and Portland, Oregon, tens of millions of Americans are sweltering in extreme heat this summer, with many cities breaking temperature records. Hurricane Beryl is the first Category 5 and Category 4 hurricane in history. Battered TexasAnd Tropical Storm Debby Intense rainfall caused by climate change drenched the east coast.
Beyond the headlines, there are thousands of untold stories of children being hurt. Because of their different anatomy, smaller size, dependence on adults, and still-developing organs, the youngest among us are particularly vulnerable to the health threats posed by a warming world — heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, infectious diseases, air pollution, and more. However, unlike an actual bomb, climate change injures children in insidious and indirect ways, and parents may not even realize they have been harmed.
Take, for example, the wildfire smoke that now regularly engulfs my town. Smoke is full of fine and ultrafine particles — microscopic soot and droplets bound to heavy metals and toxic chemicals — that are also found in fossil fuel emissions like car exhaust. We know that children who are constantly exposed to particle pollution are more likely to develop infections. small, stiff lungs; moving to an area with cleaner air before moving They can increase your lung capacity 10-12%. And we know that the smallest particles don’t stay confined to the lungs: they have been found trapped in the lungs Alzheimer’s-like plaques in children’s brains living in a highly polluted neighborhood, and long-term exposure (including prenatally) Increased risk of autism, ADHD, and cognitive and behavioral problems,
Parents know their child tires easily on the playground or struggles in school. But because the effects of climate change on children are neither immediately obvious nor easy to prove in an individual child, fossil fuels usually escape the blame. 4 month old baby and a 10 year old boy When an Arizona child died of heatstroke while out on a family trip in July, many people criticized the parents. Some expressed their anger at the fossil fuel industry, which made the temperatures that killed both children far more likely.
Extreme heat especially affects children living in low-income families or in cities that have never had the need for air conditioning in the past. 2022 Review Data from 47 children’s hospitals across the country showed that visits to the pediatric emergency room increased by 17% during the summer season. Domestic violence, child abuse, and child neglect also increase as high heat reduces parents’ ability to cope. children have difficulty learning at schoolThere is an increased risk of children dying in hot cars or players falling on the field. And air pollution and heat have also troubled people. extremely negative impact Adverse effects on pregnant women, fetuses and newborns, increased risk of life-threatening pregnancy complications, premature birth, infant mortality, childhood cancers, etc.
And today’s children face another, more serious threat. Like Ms. Ogura, they may one day have to survive in a world that none of us will recognize. On our current trajectory, The United Nations estimates that By 2100 the Earth’s temperature will be about 3°C above pre-industrial temperatures; in just a few decades, our children and grandchildren could witness widespread ecosystem and civilisational collapse.
That doesn’t have to be the case. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has shown that if we halve global emissions of carbon dioxide this decade, we can still keep the trend line of global temperature increase at or near 1.5 degrees Celsius. The Biden administration’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, aided by rapidly falling prices for solar power and batteries, has ignited a green energy and manufacturing revolution in the U.S. and raised hopes that we will meet those goals.
Yet Project 2025, Trump’s controversial blueprint for a second term, calls for undoing our clean energy progress.
I have witnessed the fierce protectiveness of parents countless times over the years. But they cannot protect their children from climate change unless they understand the urgency of the moment. If we waste a very short period of time to prevent the worst, and increase emissions instead of reducing them, the consequences will be devastating.
On that terrible day nearly 80 years ago, Keiko Ogura survived because her father, worried after hearing air raid sirens the previous night, kept her from walking to school. American parents are facing a similar moment now. Increasing heat waves, wildfires and hurricanes are our sirens. We must see what is happening to our children and save them.
Debra Hendrickson is a pediatrician and clinical professor at the University of Nevada School of Medicine. She is the author of “The Air They Breathe: A Pediatrician on the Front Lines of Climate Change.”
