Altered Mental Status
This week, two important — and concerning — reports came out. The federal government issued its Fifth National Climate Assessment, an analysis of the country’s climate vulnerabilities, making clear that climate change is no longer a specter of the future but a clear and present danger affecting all aspects of our lives. “As a climate scientist, I am not surprised by the extremes we have witnessed this year,” Katharine Heyhoe, chief scientist of The Nature Conservancy, and an author of the assessment, says. “But as a human, I am still shocked by them. It’s one thing to see these impacts in your scientific models, but it’s another to live it in real life, affecting the people and places you love.” The second report is a planetary health checkup by the esteemed science journal Lancet, which shows that climate change is doing more than affecting our lives — it is taking them. The report, known as the Lancet Countdown, marks an 85 percent increase in heat-related deaths of people age 65 and older since the 1990s, coinciding with a rapid rise in the number of heat-wave days Earth has endured. Such news is hard to process, especially as it competes with ongoing catastrophes, with the violent conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, with news of near fist-fights in the halls of Congress, and another surge of Covid-19. It’s all a little disorienting. In wilderness medicine, especially in the desert, one thing you watch for is heat exhaustion. The condition is easily treatable with rest, shade, and hydration. If ignored, though, it can lead to heatstroke, where the body loses its cooling capacity. It can no longer sweat. The main warning sign for heatstroke is an “altered mental status” that makes a patient confused and disoriented. The most effective treatment is an ice bath. I would nominate 2023 as the year humanity showed the first signs of an altered mental status. We have moved to a new phase in the climate crisis, and the pressure of that crisis is starting to strain many, many systems — personal, emotional, economic, political. We are running out of time. “We know what we need to do,” Hayhoe says. “We need to cut our carbon emissions as much as possible and as soon as possible. We need to invest in nature to take carbon out of the atmosphere as well as providing a host of other benefits for our health and biodiversity. And we need to build resilience to the impacts that are already here today.” If you have the means to help, this is your moment. It is time to ready the ice baths.
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