How is the Olympic torch relay like the U.S. presidential race?

They’re both steeped in controversies that leave their affiliated environmental issues without much press.

In the Olympics, Parisian protests over China’s abysmal human rights record and pro-Tibet activism in San Francsico may motivate the IOC to cancel the rest of the torch run. (Update on Wednesday, April 9: Looks like the relay will go forward as planned, and now pro-China demonstrators are in San Francisco as well.)

Hear much about Beijing’s pollution problems lately?

(Here’s what Beijing looks like after spending $17 billion on cleaning the air. My friend Jay Rowden, who’s there right now and took this photo, wrote this caption: This is not fog.)

And with all the Democratic infighting over race, experience, honesty, hope, rhetoric, and any other topic you can throw into the mix, I don’t read or hear the candidates talking about their plans for global warming much anymore. That probably won’t change with a secure nomination, either, because the national race will likely focus on Iraq and our ever-plummeting economy.

I’m concerned about all those issues, too, but I don’t want them to obscure the topic of climate change and the very real problems it poses for human health. I think asthma parents and patients in particular, have a responsibility to keep global warming on the national—really the international—agenda. World Health Day and National Public Health Week are doing it, but we should, too.

Here’s the thing. I’ve noticed too many parents of asthmatics consider climate change someone else’s problem. Okay, yes. Technically it’s everyone’s problem, or it will be, but right now kids like ours stand to suffer the most from the increased smog/ozone pollution that will result.

Sometimes I’ll run into another parent in the school clinic while we’re both checking our kids out of school or bringing in new prescriptions. We’ll talk, complain about asthma flares and the higher prices for inhalers, and the other parent will throw her disposable plastic water bottle in the garbage and then get into her massive Suburban and drive off.

Really. I can’t possibly be the only one who recognizes a problem here.

Why aren’t more asthma parents up in arms over global warming, considering climate change will likely hurt our kids first?

If you’re not angry, here’s why you should be:

The World Health Organization, as part of its World Health Day 2008 topic of climate change, says asthma deaths will rise by 20% in the next 10 years unless we take urgent measures.

Twenty percent.

Could your kid end up in that 20%?

Could mine?

According to the Environmental Defense Fund,

children can suffer irreversible lung damage as adults from breathing unhealthy air when young.

That’s all children, not just asthmatics like ours.

Recently, someone asked me why I take the time to maintain this blog.

That 20% is why.
The fact that both my daughters are breathing air that will lay the groundwork for their adult lung function later, is why.

But I’m just one Asthma Mom, and you’ll probably never meet me. Why not see what Al Gore has to say about it, in his new slide show from the TED conference? He channels both Barack Obama and JFK with his message of optimism and his call for a can-do attitude towards global warming.

If you didn’t click on it, he discusses how global warming lies at the bottom of the priority list, that Americans generally recognize human activity’s contribution to it but don’t feel motivated enough to do anything about that knowledge. He talks about the need for a “hero generation” to solve the environmental crisis, likening this struggle to our country’s previous ones for democracy, slavery abolition, and women’s rights.

My favorite quotes:

1. We have to become incredibly active as citizens in our democracy.
2. What is missing is a sense of urgency.
3. [We should] rise to a challenge that is worthy of our best efforts.

And in closing:

I think we ought to approach this challenge with a sense of profound joy and gratitude that we are the generation about which 1,000 years from now philharmonic orchestras and poets and singers will celebrate by saying ‘they were the ones that found it within themselves to solve this crisis and lay the basis for a bright and optimistic human future.’ Let’s do that.

I’ve got a “sense of urgency,” big time, and maybe Gore has the right idea. Maybe what we need to do is tap into the superhero craze that permeates pop culture now with movies like Iron Man and the recent X-Men series and shows like Heroes. Consider that for all those hero generations Gore mentions, they had to first recognize the problem and then make a conscious decision to become those “incredibly active citizens” that would fix the problem.

Here’s what I find easier: to approach the problem in terms of my children.

Not

How do I participate in the political process in a way most advantageous to my causes?

But

At the end of my life, will I be able to look my daughters in the eye and tell them I did everything I could, exhausted every possibility, to reduce my own carbon footprint and contribute to the larger goal of minimizing global warming and environmental damage in order to protect their health?

Of course, I’ll accomplish the second with the first. Beyond following good environmental practices in your own home, there are lots of ways to keep climate change in the spotlight and to hound politicians to do the same.

1. If you’re a Republican, you could send an email to John McCain’s campaign, expressing your concern over the candidate’s score of zero on the League of Conservation Voters’ 2007 Congressional Scorecard. How’d he manage this? By remaining absent for all 15 votes on the environment last year.

2. If you’re a Democrat, you could email Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or both, and ask them to stop bickering with each other and bring global warming back to the top of the list instead.

3. You could use the Sierra Club’s tools to ask your senator to support clean-energy tax incentives.

Remembering that 20%, however, is crucial.

Filed under: Air Quality, Asthma Moms & Dads, Asthma News & Research, Asthma Triggers, Children's Asthma, Children's Health, Eco-Friendliness