Action as an Antidote – Climate for Health
The caption on one of my favorite cartoons reads: ”My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.”
Published in the New Yorker in 2017, David Sipress aptly describes the endless stream of bad news that many of us experience daily in the world of climate change and COVID-19. As a health care worker these past few years, I’ve felt increasingly burdened by this bad news–and I’m not alone. In 2020, nearly one in every five healthcare workers quit. Many of them cited burnout and significant pay cuts with increased risk to their health and the health of their families. For several, this was compounded by a baseline, pre-pandemic state of emotional exhaustion. As stories of worldwide death and devastation from the pandemic swirled around us, we watched patients suffer in front of us. We also saw historic inequalities become glaringly