Saving humanity, if not the planet
Earlier this week on the campaign trail in Ontario, when Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford was asked what he was doing about climate change, he said he was building more highways. “One of the worst examples of pollution, go stand on a bridge of the 401 and watch bumper-to-bumper traffic,” he said. “That’s why we’re building roads and bridges and highways to get people home quicker so that they don’t have to sit in gridlock and smell someone else’s fumes.”
Yes, it’s not healthy for drivers sitting in gridlock to breathe fumes spewed by all the other vehicles. But building more highways is far more dangerous to the health of Ontarians. Ford’s statement is an example of a general lack of understanding of what keeps us healthy in this province. It reveals an ignorance of the sweeping threats to our well-being posed by climate change, and the kind of environmental destruction caused by infrastructure such as highways.
We often think about health in terms of our bodies — like how it is bad for our lungs and our cardiovascular systems to breathe exhaust, or how healthy it is to eat one food over another. But the climate crisis requires us to think of health in a different way. Rather than measuring our well-being based solely on such metrics, we need to assess our well-being based on the health of the ecosystems that we are utterly dependent on.
Human health cannot be separated from what we call the environment. There’s a concept helpful in making this connection, articulated by a Canadian Public Health Association working group called the Ecological Determinants of Health. It lays out how we humans cannot thrive, let alone survive, without healthy ecosystems. For example, we need trees and forests to breathe. We inhale the oxygen they produce. We cannot eat without soil systems made up of myriad lifeforms that support crop plants and forage for the animals we eat. Water systems such as wetlands clean the water we depend on to irrigate crops, to drink and to support the biodiversity we also rely on for many things, including pollinating many beloved food producing-plants such as blueberries and cherries.
Food is an ecological determinant of health — it’s something that comes from what we call nature and determines whether we are healthy or not. So too are air, water and soil systems. While this idea that human health is intertwined with the health of nature is ignored in mainstream politics and industry in this province, it is something that the sovereign Indigenous nations here have long known. It is not a new concept, but one colonialism has tried to stifle.
If Ford were to win the election next week — as pollsters are predicting — and the 413 and the Holland Marsh highways are built, it would mean paving over environmentally sensitive spaces, including wetlands. The term “environmentally sensitive” makes it seem like the environment is fragile and needs protecting. Yes, birds will lose habitat and nesting grounds. Aquatic plants, fish, amphibians and other animals will lose wetlands and waterways. The environment is fragile in the face of the devastation caused by this kind of infrastructure.
But we humans are also environmentally sensitive. Our health is sensitive to what happens to the ecosystems we depend on to be healthy. Ecosystem health is human health.
That said, not everyone experiences the health risks of climate change and environmental destruction equally. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognizes that different groups of people, such as low-income people or Indigenous peoples, are more at risk of suffering from the impacts of climate change in comparison to more affluent or white communities.
But everyone benefits from ecosystems. We need policy at the provincial, municipal and national levels that prioritizes protecting the ecological determinants of health so that health-supporting forests, farmland and important ecosystems can survive and even thrive during this era of climate change. If you care about the health of your body, you should care about the environment just as much.
The climate crisis requires us to think of health in a different way .... We need to assess our well-being based on the health of the ecosystems that we are utterly dependent on