Both climate change and population health suffer from solid science that is ill-understood by the general public. 

Both climate change and population health are under attack by the current political environment. As a science, they are currently seen as factual beds for easy appropriation by political groups for their own ends. Both can be easily pushed off as problems of tomorrow. 

But the reality is that global epidemics caused by climate change and threats to our global health care, to name a few Zika-driven, drug-resistant TB-driven, massive climate migration-driven, and respiratory-driven and are here now. They are not far-term. 

Our planetary future is not centuries or millennia away but is a rapidly evolving future today. One can see such a future along previously misunderstood timelines such as epigenetics to the boom-bust of macroeconomics. Now we know our genetic structure can change within our lifetime and a stock market crash can reduce our lifetime savings to zero within less than 24 hours. The impact of climate change is on similar and poorly understood timelines. 

Why would our children who are already inheriting respiratory conditions have to endure such a curse that is not their doing and endure a healthcare system disappearing underneath them unless they are in the ½ of one percent club? Our children may come into a world with less of a sense of trust in this world, a world that is less inhabitable and less reliable in terms of extreme events. If they can’t turn to a relatively predictable natural world, where may they turn?

Climate change is far more immediate than our pundits and climate deniers ever dare to say in the current political environment of immediate Twitter retribution, short-term gain, and trolling cynicism.

My wider colleagues may not share my urgency and I can understand. Perhaps you don’t share my thoughts and I can understand that too. You may immediately force me into one or other political corner and therefore tune me out and I’m open to that as well. 

But I don't think you can deny we have a fundamental discussion that’s being controlled by a very few for specific political agendas that are controlling your and my future without proper information and proper citizenry participation. We all feel somehow ill-informed here, we all feel we are taking positions without knowing the exact substance of our positions.

If perhaps I’m wrong in my urgency then consider that if I’m wrong (and as a country, we’ve been wrong to spend too much money and time making our planet better than it is) what is the downside in making our planet better or our local air quality better? How wrong can this striving for betterment be?

The sciences of climate change and population health do not suffer from being right or scientifically accurate but suffer from not being common and shared among a wider public, and a wider public not sharing their common concerns among scientists. A radical change is needed.