Why Every Ton of Greenhouse Gas Pollution Matters for Children’s Health
By Lisa Patel
July 1, 2025
Climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, is the most profound health threat facing children today—and their greatest opportunity for health improvement if we act. As both a practicing pediatrician and the Executive Director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, I witness firsthand how the climate crisis affects children’s bodies, minds, and futures. This is not an abstract threat or one that lies far in the future; it is harming children right now.
Burning fossil fuels pollutes the air we breathe, contributing to a wide array of health problems.
Air pollution is linked to asthma, heart and lung disease, neurodevelopmental delays, cancer, and premature death. Children are especially vulnerable because their lungs are still developing, they breathe more air per pound of body weight than adults, and they spend more time outdoors. Air pollution can set the stage for a lifetime of health challenges, starting from before birth and compounding as children grow.
Fossil fuel combustion also drives climate change, which intensifies extreme weather events—heatwaves, wildfires, floods, and superstorms—that are becoming more frequent, more severe, and more widespread. These events are pushing more patients into our hospitals and clinics, including children suffering from heat-related illness, respiratory distress from wildfire smoke, and injuries or trauma from hurricanes and floods. We are also seeing a sharp rise in anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress among children due to climate disasters. These mental health burdens add to a youth mental health crisis that was already growing before the pandemic.
Despite the clear risks, the Trump administration and its allies are attempting to dismantle decades of progress.
President Trump’s executive actions, underpinned by the Project 2025 agenda, have prioritized fossil fuel industry profits over the health and safety of the American people. This has included suppressing climate science, cutting funding for critical health research, and attempting to upend essential environmental protections.
The consequences of these actions are devastating.
Suppressing climate science has delayed urgently needed solutions. Undermining climate and health research has silenced the data that policymakers and healthcare professionals need to prepare for and respond to emerging threats. As a result, many in the medical community are caught off guard. After weathering the COVID-19 pandemic, our healthcare systems are already strained. Hospitals and clinics are closing, particularly in rural and underserved communities, creating healthcare deserts across the country—just as climate-related illnesses are rising.
Every year we delay ending fossil fuel energy, more greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, heating the planet and worsening the health toll. The earth is running a fever. And just like in the exam room, when a child presents with a rising fever, we don’t wait—we intervene immediately, because every hour matters. The same urgency applies here: every ton of emissions we prevent, every degree of warming we avoid, can save lives.
If we stay the President’s course, we are increasingly heading toward a future where it is too hot or smoky for children to play outside, where nature becomes something we experience through screens, and where the places we love—our forests, rivers, lakes, and snowpacks—are gone or unrecognizable. The world this administration is shaping today is a world marked by mass displacement, conflict over scarce resources, and escalating violence fueled by climate-induced instability.
This is not inevitable. It is a political choice. And one that must be measured against our Constitution’s promise that our government will not deprive our children of life and liberty.
Our government has a moral and constitutional duty to protect its citizens, especially its most vulnerable. That includes children. It is their right to grow up in a world where they can breathe clean air, drink safe water, and live in a stable climate. The federal government’s continued promotion of fossil fuel expansion violates that right and threatens the very conditions that make life possible.
That’s why the new case brought forward by Our Children’s Trust is so important. It challenges the executive actions taken by President Trump to expand fossil fuel production and exposes the disregard for science, health, and children’s futures embedded in those decisions. This case is about accountability. It is about demanding that our leaders uphold their obligation to safeguard public health, not serve dangerous corporate interests.
As a pediatrician, I took an oath to “do no harm.” The same principle must guide our climate and energy policy. We owe it to our children to act with urgency, compassion, and integrity—because their lives depend on it.
Lisa Patel is the Executive Director for the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health. She is also a national expert on climate change and children's health with a particular focus on air pollution and wildfires.