The Intersection of Aging and the Environment: INTRODUCTION (2009)

A rapidly growing aging population and mounting concern about environmental sustainability Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf, wrote Aldo Leopold more than sixty years ago in A Sand County Almanac (1948, 1987). Leopold invested his life in observing nature. His keen appreciation for ecological systems became the foundation for his profound land ethic, which stressed taking the long view of humanity's relationship with nature to preserve its integrity, stability, and beauty. Such a perspective is characteristic of the gerontological worldview. Like the environmentalists whom Leopold counseled to think like a mountain, in gerontology we too take the long view of human life. When we take time to look deeply, we can see both the fragility and the strength of each human life, each tree, each creature, each stream and mountain. And we can discern the fundamental interconnectedness and interdependence in life. In this issue of Generations, we explore research and practice on aging and the environment and discuss elements that bring the two fields together. Making this connection is critical at the present time because of two societal trends: the rapidly growing aging population and mounting concern about environmental sustainability, specifically climate change. John Muir warned that we at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world. Worsening environmental hazards are things that tug at human health in later life, including such threats as air pollution, drinking-water contaminants, heavy metals in our bodies- as well as the greatest public health threat to our world, climate change. We offer this issue to alert and inform readers about the critical importance of the environment to an aging society, and to explore how gerontologists, environmental scientists, and older people themselves can come together to find common cause. Why Should Gerontologists Address Environmental Issues? One reason that gerontologists should address environmental issues is straightforward: Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the twenty-first century (Costello et al., 2009), affecting all population groups, including older people. Writing in The Lancet, Richard Horton (2009) described a study of the threats of climate change in which [a] systematic review of the evidence showed that the risks from changing patterns of disease, food insecurity, unsafe water and sanitation, damage to human settlements, extreme events, and population growth and migration were far more severe for human health than most observers had understood. The researchers found that the threat was not only environmental and economic, but also affected human health and mortality. The recent series of scientific studies conducted by researchers from the United Kingdom and the United States for The Lancet and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (Horton, 2009) makes clear that when greenhouse gases are reduced, health benefits result in both the immediate and the long term. That health dividends are considerable is an emerging and compelling message. One study found that short-lived greenhouse pollutants such as sulphates, organic and black carbon, and ozone are significant risk factors for cardiovascular mortality. Reducing these pollutants- created primarily by combustion by-products from power, transport, and household sectors- will offer an immediate benefit for health (Horton, 2009). Reducing emissions through more walking and cycling and less use of motor vehicles will bring tremendous health benefits. Heart disease and stroke could drop by 10-20 percent, with reductions in breast cancer (12-13 percent), dementia (8 percent), and depression (5 percent) (Haines et al., 2009). Responses of species to warming across the Northern Hemisphere are well documented by changes in the timing of growth stages, especially the earlier onset of spring events, migration, and lengthened growing seasons (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007). …