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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