Dear Pat,

Last month I was in Aspen, Colorado, for Aspen Ideas, and smoke from the Utah fires fouled the air. This week I was on stage in Chicago for Aspen Climate, and it was the Canadian wildfires. Different cities, same air pollution. In this climate era, nowhere is safe from threats that used to be regional.

I was there to talk about climate, trust, health, and justice, alongside Darren Riley of JustAir, Catherine Coleman Flowers, and Ed Maibach. Darren talked about JustAir's work pairing air-quality sensors with community stories to drive policy change that actually holds. Catherine talked about academic partnerships built on listening first, trust second, solutions third — never the reverse. And I talked about how although doctors are trusted in public opinion surveys, I’m seeing an erosion of that in my clinical practice. Now is the time to listen more than talk. To pause rather than barrel forward.

When asked about specific examples of eliminating pollution and health benefits, I pointed to the Clean Air Act, which has prevented millions of premature deaths and hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and heart attacks since 1970. 

Here's what stayed with me, though: Outside of our session, in a conference dominated by AI and tech conversations, that same law barely came up. Worse, one panel had a genuinely celebratory tone about the Clean Air Act being dismantled because it clears the way for data centers to get built faster. 

It brought home the point to me that health should be intertwined into sessions with people bearing the expertise and lived experiences to call values like this out. Sure, regulation is inconvenient to the private sector. But in our brand of capitalism that holds no shared social contract, it is an important way to ensure profit at any cost is not the winning value. 

There were many thoughtful people having thoughtful conversations about a moment in human civilization with the convergence of four major forces: AI, climate change, vast income inequality, and the rise of authoritarianism. There were several optimists I heard who focused on the opportunities: Big Tech knows public opinion is against them and that they need to win the race against China and against each other. Now is the time for communities to ask for a lot because they are likely to get it.

One speaker from Microsoft said progress moves at the speed of trust. But once trust is broken, and “progress” by their measure becomes impossible, what happens? After all, Microsoft only stopped doing NDAs after the Wisconsin legislature was considering passing legislation to outright ban the practice from their behavior in the state. 

I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know what values I’ll be holding through it. Health and justice need to guide what we do. Trust isn’t something you decide on later. Organizing works, and it’s our most powerful tool to ensure we build the future communities want, rather than what Big Tech claims we need. 

Starting next month, we’re co-hosting a four-part webinar series on AI data centers, climate, and health, where we’ll continue these vital conversations. We hope you'll join us.

In solidarity,

Want to join a powerful community of people who are all in on climate and health?