And it looks like there is a high degree of certainty that 2024 is going to be even hotter than 2023. Today we're going to dig into how this change in our climate can impact our health. We're also going to talk about how solutions can really lead us to a world that is healthier, safer, and more climate stable.

First, let me introduce my guest, Dr Sweta Chakraborty. Dr Chakraborty is a globally recognized risk and behavioral scientist. She's an expert on global risks ranging from climate change to COVID 19. She's a trusted authority on proactive preparedness to mitigate against the impacts of climate change, motivated by the need for clear, credible, and evidence based communication.

Welcome to the WebMD Health Discovered Podcast, Dr Chakraborty.

Sweta Chakraborty, PhD: Thank you so much for having me.

Pathak: Thank you so much for joining us. Before we jump into our conversation, I'd love to hear about your own personal health discovery when it comes climate change and all of the work that you're doing. What was your aha moment and how did you start in this landscape?

Chakraborty: My background is actually in health. I studied behavioral science and I was trying to understand why we still have adverse patient outcomes when we have such good preventative medicine and clear treatment regimes for disease states that have really been understood for decades. There's still such negative adverse outcomes for cardiovascular disease. Why is it that? Even when doctors tell their patients to take statins, there's still something like a 70 percent non adherence rate? I was fascinated by that because I was a pharmaceutical sales rep for a short period of time.  

So all of those different drugs that were part of the cardiovascular line. is actually what motivated me to be curious about why humans don't actually make the best decisions to improve their utility, whether it's health, whether it's where they're living, whether it's their education. We systematically see irrational decision making that doesn't result in the best end outcomes for us.

One of the things that I found super interesting is that your individual decision making, even about your own health, it doesn't just stay with you. It's not a personal problem like a lot of us want to say. It actually impacts your family. It impacts your community impacts society more broadly.

And that is something I found fascinating as well. In America, there is this American exceptionalism, we think we can do whatever we want, and we have the right to make our own decisions. But the fact is that so much of what we decide to do has broader implications.

I started my career in health and I realized pretty much everything I was studying and looking at, the source of it, the source of why things were becoming worse in terms of patient outcomes, adverse outcomes was linked to decision making, a mistaken perception that didn't align to actual realities, and then also the environment around us was rapidly changing, which was making it more difficult generally for improved outcomes.

So there's worsening communicable diseases, there is worsening non communicable diseases. There's longer seasons for mosquitoes being vectors of disease. All of those factors were happening because of a very simple fact that the planet was warming and we weren't getting a grip on it and we weren't adapting fast enough to this new climate reality, this new environment. This new environment is amplifying every single aspect from not just our health, which is what we're talking about here, but to security, right? There's a word for it in security communities. It's called threat amplifier. So existing conflict and violence is being made worse by the planet warming. We're seeing it in food security issues. We're seeing it in water scarcity. We're seeing it in every single aspect of our lives. Once I realized this, that was the aha moment, right?  

So health is where I started. I realized health outcomes were being made worse because of climate. I realized that patients really didn't make the best decisions for themselves because of this interesting quirk of our brains, this perception versus reality gap that we have, and then ultimately the environment's changing so fast. So, as a behavioral scientist, I knew I had to dedicate my expertise to closing that gap for ultimately better outcomes for patients, communities and the planet.

Pathak: That's amazing. I think what you're saying resonates so much with me because I feel like that is a very similar aha moment to me in terms of practicing medicine in the office, one on one. I'm a primary care doctor, so I'm very interested in prevention and you start going upstream of the condition, so what caused that? You sort of get to the environment and. climate as being foundational, and, as you said, a threat multiplier for so many of the reasons that you can't necessarily make the healthiest decisions because so much of it is outside of your control or seemingly outside of your control as an individual.  

When we think about climate change, most of us think it is a problem in the future, or something that may be a nuisance right now. We are thinking that we have to turn our thermostat up or that we have to turn our air conditioning up higher.  

So how do you help shift that gap in the work that you're doing from the reality that this is a problem affecting us right now to the perception that this is something that I'm going to have to worry about in the future.

Chakraborty: You raised so many good points I want to touch on. Yes, the children playing outside is a visceral way to connect with audiences when you're trying to explain to them the dangers of climate. What you just described, how when you were a child, your parents weren't concerned about how much time you were spending outside and now with heat, of course, we know what happens to the body over a certain internal temperature and it's really dangerous and it's increasing.

Something like 70,000 deaths were reported in Europe alone, from heat and that is increasing three fold globally, right? So globally, heat related debts are increasing by 2050 is the prediction and air pollution kills 7 to 8 million people globally. And these are all health impacts that are coming from the planet getting hotter. And so the way to touch people to get them to understand and to care is by using those personal examples, finding a touch point that people can relate to, and health is a great perspective to take if you're talking about climate and the planet. Bring people in through that because everybody is worried about their children. That's an intrinsically universal human quality. We care about the vulnerable and the vulnerable means our children and our elderly. There are other qualities that we all have in common. The one that we don't have in common is environmental stewardship. We've been terrible in how we engage and interact with the environment, but we can come to that later.

But, to really take advantage of just the things that we do share and to share the stories about, I wasn't worried about playing outside, but with my children, I get nervous after they've been outside for some time. Sharing that works because you're really touching on a cognitive trigger that builds an emotion and then that emotion results in an action. There are many ways to do this in a good way. Advertisers and marketers have known this for decades and they manipulate the quirks of our brains and get us to buy more stuff. They know that when we're in a heightened state of sadness or anger that we're going to have an emotional reaction, and based on that, we are going to make decisions, and they're predictable.

Our irrational decision making, or our emotional decision making, is actually quite predictable. But that's a good thing, right? Let's actually use that for good. So now we know that we can reach people and make the invisible visible by telling stories of heat related fears, or heat related deaths, even.

And that makes an invisible killer like heat, tangible, and it makes it more salient. Because these are stories that aren't reported in the media, and that's another big issue. You don't see stories on air pollution, you don't see stories on heat, you don't see stories on sea level rise, and flooding.

You almost can't blame reporters and the media, in the sense that those headlines don't get clicked on, they don't get read. Because we humans perceive it as too slow moving, too invisible, too far in the future. Too much of a problem for them over there.

This is not my problem. This is way too far away. And the irony of all of this is, these are the biggest risks to us and our families and to our children. We say we care about our children and our grandchildren and their futures, but there is a massive disconnect between what we say and how we're actually responding and where we're actually putting our attention and our time and our resources into solving and fixing.

Instead, we're putting a lot of time and attention into where the media does give attention to and that's terrorist attacks and plane crashes and active shooters. And those are terrifying things. I'm not undermining those issues and those risks, but if you actually look at the base rate statistics of those risks occurring versus, let's say, heat and pollution, there is a massive disconnect as to where we're actually putting our time and attention. So, me as a behavioral scientist and as a communication scientist, how do you close that gap so that our decisions are commensurate with the reality of risks that we're actually facing? That's what we're not doing correctly right now. But you hit the nail on the head. It's talking about children. It's telling those stories. That's how you start to get people to care.  

Pathak: I am also really interested in something that you're talking about with regard to what I hear from a lot of my friends. So this has basically become something that I talk about in every realm of my life, because like you, I think that it is just a critical piece that people are potentially missing that is going to impact their lives. We know it will impact their health right now, and in the long term, but I often struggle with the doom and gloom message.

And we're hearing some of that in the media and the idea that everything has the potential to be much better. What are you finding is the best practice for having this kind of talk with somebody?

Chakraborty: That's a great question. We're kind of in a choose your own adventure at the moment, right? Based on the decisions we make, it's going to be one outcome versus the other. I imagine most of us want the outcome to be a better, cleaner society. It's an opportunity right now to rebuild in a way that actually has environmental stewardship as a core principle.

We've got the sustainable development goals. We've got the UN finally acknowledging health. The first day of health happened at the COP, which was the meeting of all countries around climate. It was in Dubai at the end of last year, 2023. The day of health was acknowledged and health is becoming increasingly part of the global conversation.

It's coming up at climate week New York, it’s coming up, of course, at COP29 as well now. And so there is recognition that this nexus of climate and health is going to be where we draw the most attention, money, resources to get people excited about building a better, more equitable, just future. And it's that opportunity to really build that right now. That's really all true. Those are all very positive trends that I see happening and I like to lead with that.

If we can get our act together, I think that we can actually incorporate environmental stewardship in the bigger global picture and make it an intrinsic human value the same way we teach our children do unto others as you want done unto you, the simple golden rule, treat people how you want to be treated.

We need to make very inherent in raising our children that we need to treat the planet in a way that is sustainable so that it can give us what we need to sustain life for generations to come. That has been what's missing. So, having the sustainable development goals in place, having the UN recognize how important health is to bringing all of this into reality, I think is all moving us in the right direction.  

That being said, it is scary. Doom and gloom that leads to immobilization or indifference or the thought that it's going to all end in Armageddon anyway, that's not helpful. That level of doom and gloom without any positivity and hope and action steps does not breed what I think the majority of us would want to see come out of this. But we need to get through a very saturated information landscape that has so many things that are plaguing society, from war and violence and conflict and strife, etc.

So how does climate change actually make its way to the surface? It does need to scare people. I'm okay with the reality of climate being shared and it being scary. Because it is. The fact is, is that it's not inaccurate. The reality of what's coming, if we don't get a grip on this, is terrifying. But that doom and gloom needs to be followed with hope and action steps.

And that's something that you'll see I do in my personal work. I'll just say this one last quote. I cannot figure out who to attribute this to, but it's so good.

Basically, the best antidepressant for climate is taking action. Because people are constantly talking about climate anxiety, and now there's mental health. We haven't even gotten into the mental health portions of this, right? We've been talking about detrimental physical health impacts. But, what is the best antidepressant for this? It's truly to take action. And so that's what I work on. I've got the action steps available for people at the point that they're comfortable, where they can plug in based on how much time they have, what they care about, how much bandwidth, etc.

Pathak: So where can people plug in and how do you sort of think about them using their Venn diagram of what you just said, like what they're passionate about, what they have time for and what they can sort of fit into their lives. How do you triangulate all of that and where can people go to take action?

Chakraborty: I love that because it's all about taking action, right? I'm in communication. I do a lot of communicating through social media and mainstream media. But communication shouldn't just be dropping information and seeing what happens. The point of communicating is to drive and predict behavioral change.

And again, for me, that's behavioral change that aligns to the science, that aligns to the data, that aligns to the facts. Because we just don't have the luxury of making decisions based on perceptions. If we did that, we would put our entire GDP into protecting children against active shooters.

And that's important to safeguard our community as much as possible, but we have to see what the actual base rate statistics of that risk occurring are, and then we need to allocate our resources accordingly because they're limited, right? So, the whole point of communicating is to drive policy to align to the real risk, or science based policy and to get the public on board because you're not going to be able to get policies in place if you don't have public acceptance.  

It's really about educating audiences and then having audiences turn into communicators and educate their immediate family and community and that is the number one thing to do. Become a communicator yourself. If you've listened to this, you've gained enough knowledge to start a conversation to just get it into your daily discussion on politics and sports and pop culture and climate change. We can bring it into our daily conversation. Right now, climate change is covered in single digits and mainstream media, right? I'm grateful to you and your podcast, but it still has such a long way to go given the reality of what's actually happening.  

We need to move the majority of people that care about what's going on and just haven't done anything yet. That's my target audience. And that's probably who's listening right now. So based on that, where do you fall on the spectrum of things that you're able to do?

Do you just want to know more information? That's perfectly fine. If that's all you're capable of doing at the moment, that is excellent. Just get in the know. Become the knower. Know the data. Know the numbers. Know the facts. And then talk about it. Share it. Communicate it. Right? But then you can move to the next level.

Be the doer. Become an actor. There are so many tools that can help you plug in really easily based on what you care about. If you care about health, I'm assuming that's a yes, you can get right into campaigns that really target the fossil fuel industry that's directly responsible for 3 to 5 million deaths. And those biggest polluters need to pay. So if that's something that really gets to you, then act on it, get involved, go online, sign a petition, and then turn that virtual action into real world impact. That's the whole point. We've got the technology, we've got the tools to actually bring people from individuals to real campaigns.

Lending your just your name, your voice, your signature can go a really long way and there are tools to allow you to do that, including the we don't have time platform. It's totally free to use. You can log in and you immediately get plugged in. You can see if you're interested in fashion, right? Can you adjust the clothing that you're wearing on your body?

Can you adjust the food that you're consuming? Can you do things in your day that bring you to the next tier of caring as an actor on climate? There are so many tangible, actionable steps to be able to take across so many different sectors. So I highly encourage you to look at that and just look at all of the different options that you have.

And then finally, what I would love for everybody to get to is global citizen, because we know that climate change does not respect political borders. There's so many impacts of climate that are going to affect regions and are going to affect the world. Weather is interconnected. So the jet stream weakening is resulting in the polar vortex coming down into the lower latitudes.

We are so interconnected globally that we need us as citizens of the planet to really consider ourselves global citizens. And that means raising your voice to multilateral efforts, to the UN conferences, to the world economic forum. You don't have to get there right away. Start where you're comfortable and see how easy it is to plug in. That's my appeal to listeners

Pathak: Can you share your own personal climate joys at the individual level and from the fact that you are a global citizen? What are you seeing that is bringing you some climate optimism?

Chakraborty: Everybody says the next generation, so I'm really trying to be different from that. But it is incredible, the amount of talent that's in the pipeline. I really encourage young people to get involved in careers that we know are coming. The clean energy trends position is underway. It was written into the final draft agreement at the COP28 by fossil fuel producing states and by a president that is the head of an oil and gas company. The UAEs actual oil company was the one who signed off on a final language that said, we are transitioning away from fossil fuels. It took way too long to get there, but we got there.

That is the writing on the wall. At this point, what leg does anyone have to stand on, including major oil giants? Saudi Arabia even said, yeah, we have to transition away from oil. So that's actually a lot of hope there, right? There's a recognition. And it's to protect your own future.

Ultimately, these countries understand that they might be greedy in the short term, but business as usual is just not hospitable to human life. So, what gives me hope is the talent that's in the pipeline, those that are advocating and championing that I see, even if you can't physically go, because it's out of many, People’s means, not just young people.

It's not like you have to show up to every single one of these, but we have the technology for you to plug in. You can do so much of this stuff virtually. So that gives me hope. And then ultimately, if Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the COP president and these head of oil companies are saying we've got to transition away from fossil fuel, let's just move it quickly. For me, the issue now is how quickly are we going to get there? Because we know we're going in that direction.  

Pathak: So tell me a little bit more about ways that people can get involved. You mentioned virtually tuning into things like COP. What about Climate Week in New York? How do people participate?

Chakraborty: It seems daunting and it was daunting for me until I actually got involved with we don't have time. but the benefit is the climate community is extremely friendly. And they're looking to expand, right? So there's always room for somebody who's interested in getting engaged and getting involved.

There are so many nonprofits. There are so many events that are open to the public. There are so many events that are live streamed. My company live streams the Clinton global initiative events, the world economic forums events, From UN TV, we livestream what the UN FCCC is doing. And so it's easy to just watch if you can physically be there. But you can participate through our platform as well. We've created an engagement tool where you can talk to others that are also watching. You can talk to interviewers and get them to ask questions to hold those in leadership accountable for what they're doing in the private sector in the public sector. So the technology is there to get involved for sure and then if you're able to make, it there's a climate week near you at this point, right? You’ve seen them pop up all over the world, which is really exciting. You can start one, but you can also just get into what is already happening. There are so many options and so many directions you can go and it's an extremely welcoming place. The beauty is how much positivity you will see and actually being able to overcome this climate crisis when you're around people who are working in it and putting their all into it, every day and every night.

It's just extremely positive. It's extremely motivating. And so it's a great antidote to any sort of fears or anxiety you might have on climate.

Pathak: That's really helpful. I'm so thankful for the conversation and for your time. I like to close all of my episodes with bite sized action items for people to create sustainable changes in our daily lives. and you've given us so many tips already, and so many ways to think about getting involved. What would you share with anyone that's interested and listening right now to take an active role, particularly if health is what moves them, to think about how they can protect their health from the ravages of climate change?  

Chakraborty: Every summer is breaking records. The number one thing to do when it comes to heat is, of course, listen to the advice of doctors. Do not be outside longer than is recommended, but then talk about it because it's still invisible. And so as a behavioral scientist, the real issue that I see faces human beings is that we perceive lower risk and attribute lower risk when a risk is invisible or slow moving or far in the future, like I mentioned. And so it's really important for us that care about health and care about the risk of heat, for example, as one of the worst impacts of climate, in terms of health impacts to talk about heat and make it visible.  

Pathak: Thank you so much for being with us today. We've talked with Dr Sweta Chakraborty about all things climate change and getting involved in climate solutions, because to your point earlier, the biggest medicine we can take against climate anxiety or climate depression is climate action. I really, really appreciate that point. To find out more information about Dr Chakraborty and her work, visit SwetaChakraborty.com. We'll have that information in our show notes. You can also check out we don't have time. org. Thank you so much for listening. Please take a moment to follow rate and review this podcast on your favorite listening platform. If you'd like to send me an email about topics you're interested in or questions for future guests, please send me a note at webmdpodcastatwebmd. net. This is Dr. Neha for the WebMD Health Discovered podcast.

​