Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves

Every so often, a book that's classified "text book" is so beautifully presented and generously explained that it deserves a broader audience. Planetary Health is that rare book. Anyone who is interested in understanding the many serious challenges facing our planet — including factors that allow for a global pandemic, gross inequities around the world, and the extreme-weather impacts of climate change — will be relieved to read this book, or at least its Introduction and COVID-19 afterword. Relieved not because these crises are going to go away, but because now we know what they are, where they came from, and can do everything in our power to accelerate solutions.

This book has the potential to have a worldwide impact on attitudes toward protecting our planet. I hope it will! It is very readable for lay people but it's contributors are scholars and their work compelling for any student of the environment or health.

Well laid out, well written, comprehensive and highly credible scientific treatise on this topic. Likely to be a resource to researchers, the environmental community, human health experts and decision makers.

Great for anyone working on public health

This book is amazing!

Let's begin with my disclosures: I'm in the business (I direct the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University); I am friends with one of the editor/authors (Howard Frumkin); and one of the authors (Susan Clayton) prominently featured some of my research in her chapter.The first two of these reason explain why I was eager to score a copy of this book as soon as possible; the 3rd came as a pleasant surprise when I read the chapter on Mental Health on a Changing Planet.The book did not disappoint. In fact, it exceeded my high expectations in every way.The editors are highly respected experts in planetary health, and widely known to be respectful and caring people--which are great qualities in a book editor. Likely because of these qualities, they were able to convince many of the top experts in the field of planetary health and related disciplines to contribute to this book, which (I know from experience) is not an easy task. Myers' and Frumkin's true skill as editors, however, shines most brightly in the fact that every chapter in the book is written in clear, engaging, plain English; any interested reader will effortlessly understand every sentence and every idea in this important book. There is nothing simple about planetary health--indeed, it's really quite complicated--but the combination of world-class expert authors writing for world-class scientific editors has made the difficult to fathom realities of our current situation planetary health situation easy to grasp.Another quality of the book that I greatly appreciate is that it's essentially organized to answer three important questions: What's happening? Why does that matter? What can we do about it? By the end of the book, any reader will have a much better understanding of the planetary health perils that we face, and our options for "pivoting" from peril to opportunity (for a healthier and more sustainable future for humanity and the ecosystems on which we depend).After only a month in my possession, Planetary Health has already become an indispensable part of my library.

As a longtime fan of Howie Frumkin, and a supporter of the One Health movement in public health (as well as a greater connection between humans and the rest of nature), I believe this book should be required reading in schools of all kinds, from middle school to graduate school. During the time of COVID, it has special relevance. Ironically, it will have even more power if assigned as a distance learning education tool. Every voting person (or anyone with a pulse) should be made aware of this book and the need to unite personal health with local ecological health and planetary health.

As a physicist concerned with the degradation of the Earth, but not very knowledgeable, I found the book illuminating. It clearly articulates the issues of population, agriculture, garbage, deforestation, increased green house gases and connects these so they are no longer just phrases but make a picture that invites action.Intended primarily for serious students, the book takes effort to read, but rewards that effort. I was especially struck by the chapter on economics and the call for adapting our values to the necessity of maintaining the Earth we live on.