BOSTON – The recently adopted Paris Agreement – a historic international climate deal to limit global warming – notably recognizes climate change as an “urgent and irreversible threat” to humanity. The threat is manifold, but perhaps most immediately felt will be the impact on human health, from the clean air that we breathe to the safe water that we drink.

Climate change is “the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century,” as the World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan has said. Climate change stands to increase health problems related to air quality, infectious disease, nutrition, and natural disasters, among others. By 2030, the WHO estimates there will be an additional 250,000 deaths per year from climate change.

And yet, health featured very little into the passage of the landmark international agreement adopted by 195 nations earlier this month.

Watch our founder and executive editor Charles Sennott moderate a panel, in collaboration with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, featuring:

– Aaron Bernstein, Associate Director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health;

– Jack Spengler, Director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health;

–  Barry Levy, adjunct professor of public health at Tufts Medical School and co-author of Climate Change and Public Health;

– Maria Neira, Director of the Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health at the World Health Organization