The following excerpt is from a guest post by Matt James, Visiting Scholar at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, published this week on Health Affairs Blog’s GrantWatch.
Some would say that the climate change and health connection is having its “moment.” It could not have arrived too soon. Environmental funders have, to a large extent, provided the primary philanthropic support for fighting climate change. The money spent annually by foundations and individual philanthropists has been directed toward wringing carbon out of our energy systems and to other measures that will slow our inexorable path toward a warmer world. That may be changing, though—climate change is the existential threat of our time, and health philanthropists are starting to realize that climate change has the ability to overwhelm the substantial progress we have made in improving human health and extending longevity.