"Health Experts Are Furious With Trump For Pulling Out of Paris Pact

"Environmentalists aren’t the only ones outraged over President Trump’s decision to have the U.S. walk away from the Paris accord on global warming. Health experts are pretty dismayed as well.

The climate agreement, reached in Paris in 2015 after years of negotiation, aims to keep Earth’s temperature within 2 degrees Celsius (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of pre-industrial levels. Meeting that goal would have required the U.S. to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gasses — moves that Trump said would wipe out the jobs of millions of Americans. (Many economists disagree.)

Should global temperatures exceed the 2-degree Celsius target, the environmental consequences are well-known: higher seas, more powerful storms, longer droughts and diminishing biodiversity, to name a few.

But the people who pay attention to public health want to remind you that a warmer planet will bring more air pollution, fuel the spread of infectious diseases and increase the incidence of certain cancers, among many other things. (For a full accounting of how climate change impacts human health, check out this report from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences or this assessment from the U.S. Global Change Research Program.)"

Karen Kaplan reports for the Los Angeles Times June 2, 2017.