ABSTRACT

In this groundbreaking, global analysis of the relationship between climate change and human health, Hans Baer and Merrill Singer inventory and critically analyze the diversity of significant and sometimes devastating health implications of global warming. Using a range of theoretical tools from anthropology, medicine, and environmental sciences, they present ecosyndemics as a new paradigm for understanding the relationship between environmental change and disease. They also go beyond the traditional concept of disease to examine changes in subsistence and settlement patterns, land-use, and lifeways, throwing the sociopolitical and economic dimensions of climate change into stark relief. Revealing the systemic structures of inequality underlying global warming, they also issue a call to action, arguing that fundamental changes in the world system are essential to the mitigation of an array of emerging health crises link to anthropogenic climate and environmental change.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|32 pages

Global Warming

A Grave Contradiction of the Capitalist World System

chapter 2|20 pages

Lifeways in Peril

The Impact of Global Warming on Settlement Patterns and Human Perceptions of Climate

chapter 3|18 pages

An Age of Weather Extremes

Consequences for Human Subsistence, Water, and Nutrition

chapter 4|22 pages

A Disturbed Planet

Heat Stress, Pollutants, and Environmental Diseases

chapter 5|24 pages

Agents of Suffering

The Spread of Waterborne and Vector-Borne Infections

chapter 6|28 pages

Ecosyndemics

The Interaction of Changing Environment and Disease

chapter 7|26 pages

Adaptation Versus Mitigation

Why Existing Climate Regimes and “Green Capitalism” are not Enough to Contain Global Warming

chapter 8|16 pages

Toward a Healthier Planet

The Creation of a Democratic Ecosocialist World System