The Center's Mission

Paul Epstein co-founded the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. In this video, he describes its mission to educate students, the public, professionals and law makers about health and the climate change. He touches on the center's five major areas of research: infectious disease, heat waves, respiratory disease, winter weather and (the thing that keeps him up at night) pests and pathogens.

Extreme Heat

Dr. Paul Epstein describes how heat waves are becoming increasingly lethal, citing the heat wave of 2003 that killed 50,000 people in Europe and melted 10% of the Alps. Heat waves and drought devastate crops and threaten the stability of food prices worldwide.

Wild Winter Weather

 

Dr. Paul Epstein describes how warming oceans cause wetter, heavier snow and extreme winter weather conditions.

Flooding

Dr. Paul Epstein describes how increasingly intense rainfall and rising oceans cause disastrous flooding in the United States, Australia,and Bangladesh.

Oceans: the Engine of Climate Change

In his approachable and lucid way, Dr. Paul Epstein explains how oceans drive climate change, and how human activity endangers oceans, a message made all the more urgent in light of a study published November 28, 2012 showing that oceans are rising 60% faster than had been projected.

Africa to Algal Blooms

Dr. Paul Epstein describes how a cholera epidemic in Peru catalyzed his pioneering research into health to climate change.

Paul Epstein, November 16, 1943 – November 13, 2011

While working as a writer/producer on a video for Climate Action Brookline in January, 2011 I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Paul Epstein, a global health expert, physician and co-founder of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. Paul was a pioneer in the study of how climate change affects public health, researching its role in cholera outbreaks, malaria, the widening range of Lyme disease and the dramatic increase in asthma over the past 25 years. Paul served as science advisor to Al Gore on the production of An Inconvenient Truth. As so often happens, only a fraction of Paul's interview was used in the final video. Director Ian Brownell had the foresight to store the raw footage in a server.

Just a few months after the Climate Action Brookline video was shown, Paul died of lymphoma. In collaboration with Ian Brownell, I am publishing 11 short videos from this footage, with the hope that we will help to keep his vision alive at a time when his message is more urgent than ever.