It was Tampa-St. Petersburg, pride of the Sunshine state. TSP supplanted the longtime leader, the even sunnier Phoenix, in Arizona.
Miami-Dade rose to second on the list, and perennially-high-finisher Las Vegas was not far behind.
So let’s review: the hottest real estate market in the country just dodged a hurricane bullet, as Ian closely followed the destructive path of 2004’s Hurricane Charley, straight up the gullet of a smaller estuary at Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte, plowing over Fort Myers and across the state.
Miami, another hot real-state market, also missed the bullet. The last time the area was hit was in1992, with category-5 Hurricane Andrew, which subsequently triggered a crisis, as private insurers fled the Florida marketplace upon seeing Andrew’s then-unheard-of property damage toll of $40 billion.
Phoenix, the previous king of realty heat, is breaking its own records for thermal heat; and Las Vegas, a principal realty rival for Phoenix, also competes with the former for disappearing Colorado River water. The mighty river’s dwindling water supply may soon bring crisis to both cities, Southern California and a good slice of the U.S. food production.
We’re staring at an American mystery: We’re clamoring to live in our own future Atlantis, or in our own parched, broiling desert.
The strange phenomenon happens in not-so-hot markets, too: Take Fort Myers and Cape Coral, which suffered far worse from Hurricane Ian. Their Lee County is part of a relentless push toward living on the imperiled coast. In the 1950 census, Lee County had 23,211 citizens. Now, it is home to 787,976 people – meaning there are 34 times as many people in harm’s way than there were in 1950.
Tampa Bay is one of the hottest real state markets in the country despite climate risks.
Credit: jharris407/Pixabay
One more thing about the good people of Tampa Bay: they didn’t just dodge a bullet when Hurricane Ian fooled forecasters and made landfall to the south, they dodged another hurricane bullet. The area is running a 101-year lucky streak, with the last direct hit coming in 1921.The bay is a large, south-facing estuary. A bullseye shot from a major hurricane would guarantee massive wind and surge damage.
In the 1920 census, Tampa’s Pinellas and Hillsborough counties had a combined population of 88,257. Today, they’re at 2,434,809 –this means that a century later, there are more than 27 times as many people, and a corresponding number of schools, hospitals, Burger Kings and more. All on the same amount of land, with the same amount of shoreline, at the same precious few feet above sea level.
That’s where sea level is right now, anyway. Within a few decades, we’re told that sea level rise will
have Duval Street in Key West permanently under water. Collins Avenue in Miami Beach and Biscayne Blvd.: gone. Parts of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, better suited for a Navy Yard. The ground surrounding Cape Canaveral’s historic launch pads, a tidal flat. The check-in desk at Mar-a-Lago will be a wading pool.
Yet Florida’s ambitious governor can’t bring himself to mention climate change. Nor can he pack Hurricane Ian onto a chartered jet and ship it up to an affluent resort in the Northeast. Florida’s two U.S. Senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, can’t mention it either.
Scott preceded Ron DeSantis as governor. He reportedly blocked all state employees from mentioning climate change (Scott has denied this). I watched Scott do two extensive one-on-one interviews on Wednesday. He didn’t mention climate or sea level rise, nor did the interviewers call him out on it.
I don’t buy the “too soon” response that the NRA trots out after every mass shooting. Climate change will continue to be the “active shooter” in every storm, heat wave and drought that afflicts us.
We need to treat it that way, and talk about it. Now.
Peter Dykstra is our weekend editor and columnist and can be reached at pdykstra@ehn.org or @pdykstra.
His views do not necessarily represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate, or publisher Environmental Health Sciences.
Among major watershed regions nationwide, the Ohio River basin received the largest volume of toxic chemical discharges by weight in 2020, according to the report, published today by the PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center. Other heavily polluted watersheds included the Mid-Atlantic watershed, which encompasses parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland Delaware and New York; and the South Atlantic-Gulf, which encompasses Florida and parts of surrounding states.
The report looked at data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Toxic Release Inventory, which documents self-reported emissions of toxic chemicals from industrial sources across the country. It found that western Pennsylvania’s waterways see particularly large releases of chemicals like compounds of nickel and chromium, which are linked to reproductive harm, including reduced sperm count, birth defects, miscarriages and premature births.
The lower Monongahela watershed, which encompasses much of southwestern Pennsylvania (and falls within the Ohio River basin), ranks 4th nationally for releases of chemicals that cause reproductive harm into waterways. Around 7,364 pounds of these chemicals were dumped into the watershed’s rivers and streams in 2020, according to the report.
“Pennsylvania’s waterways should be clean — for swimming, fishing, providing drinking water and supporting wildlife,” Ashleigh Deemer, deputy director with the PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center, said in a statement. “But all too often, polluters use our rivers as open sewers with no repercussions.”
Under the Clean Water Act, pollution released into waterways is regulated and monitored in various ways. Most of the pollutants reported under the Toxic Release Inventory are released into waterways legally, but some environmental advocates argue that pollution allowances under the law are too high, given the health harms of these chemicals and improved availability of better pollution control technology in recent years.
Photo Credit: PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center.
In the Pittsburgh area, U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works, about 15 miles south of downtown Pittsburgh, dumped more than 2.1 million pounds of toxic chemicals into local waterways, making it the top industrial water polluter in Pennsylvania. The Clairton Coke Works ranks 17th on a list in the report of the top 50 industrial water polluters by volume in the country (it’s also a top air polluter).
The report also ranks U.S. Steel among the top 20 parent companies for total releases of toxic chemicals into waterways nationwide in 2020, along with companies like Tyson Foods, Koch Industries, BASF Corp., Dupont De Nemours Inc. and Exxon Mobil Corp.
Statewide, the report found that more than 5.8 million pounds of toxic substances were dumped into waterways by industrial sites across the Commonwealth in 2020, including chemicals like nitrates from farming and byproducts from petroleum, steel and coal-related industries that are linked to cancer, reproductive harm and developmental issues in children. A total of 22,621 pounds of chemicals linked specifically to reproductive harm were released into the state’s waterways in 2020.
Those figures make the Commonwealth the third worst in the country for chemical releases of chemicals linked to reproductive harm, the 12th worst state in the nation for toxic chemicals released into waterways by volume and the ninth worst for chemicals dumped into waterways by total toxicity.
At the national level, the report found that 193.6 million pounds of toxic substances were dumped into U.S. waterways in 2020.
The report found that the Cleveland-Cliffs Steel Corp.’s plant in Rockport, Indiana, dumped more than 11.9 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the Lower Ohio-Little Pigeon watershed, which encompasses parts of Indiana and Kentucky, making it the worst industrial water polluter in the country.
To lower those releases and reduce related health effects, the report’s authors recommend requiring polluting industries to systematically reduce their use of toxic chemicals, and updating pollution control standards to eliminate the direct release of toxic chemicals into waterways.
“The Clean Water Act has drastically improved our waterways since its signing nearly 50 years ago,” Heather Hulton VanTassel, executive director of Three Rivers Waterkeeper, said in a statement. “Nevertheless, due to loopholes, deregulations and lack of enforcement, our waterways are nowhere near where they should be.”
“There needs to be stricter regulations on what can be discharged into our waters,” she added. “We need to close the loopholes, and we need to enforce our clean water laws.”
The study, which focused on California residents, is the latest of several exploring the impacts of air pollution on the incidence and severity of Covid-19 infections. And the research adds to a growing body of global research highlighting the importance of reducing air pollution for overall health.
The researchers determined that 9%, or at least 4,250 Covid-19 deaths, could have been prevented if California met national air quality standards.
The most vulnerable people in terms of air pollution exposure were likely to be Latinos and those living in low-income areas, the researchers found.
The study, published in Environmental Advances, was authored by Paul English, director of the Public Health Institute and its “Tracking California” program, along with ten other researchers, including some affiliated with the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) department of medicine and the UCSF department of epidemiology and biostatistics.
“People of color live in communities that have some of the worst air pollution, and also have greater chances of getting sick and even greater chances of dying from COVID,” English said in a release announcing the study.
“This is really concerning, especially in regions like the San Joaquin Valley where wildfires are occurring right now and contributing to greater air pollution. We can save lives by making sure families and schools have access to free and low-cost air cleaners, and that outdoor workers receive paid time off and adequate personal protection during high-pollution events like wildfires,” English stated in the release.
Vehicle emissions, including from commuters and from farm machinery in agricultural areas, were big contributors to the harmful air pollution, according to English. Dust from agricultural areas is also a factor, he said in an interview.
Farmworkers and other outdoor workers are particularly vulnerable to the dangers of the pollution, he said.
The worst areas for air pollution were the San Joaquin Valley and the South Coast air basin. Credit: The New Lede.
The authors examined data for 3.1 million SARS-CoV-2 infections and 49,691 COVID-19 deaths in California from February 2020 to February 2021, looking at where the people infected with the respiratory disease lived.
The study found that people living in the highest quintile of long-term exposure to air pollution – defined as particulate matter less than 2.5 pm in diameter (PM2.5) – had a 20% higher risk of contracting Covid-19 compared to people living in the lowest quintile.
The researchers said that for those people living in those highest exposure areas, the risk of death from COVID-19 was 51% higher when compared to people living in the lowest exposure areas.
PM2.5 describes fine inhalable particles that can lodge in the lungs and pass into the bloodstream, potentially also impacting an individual’s heart.
English said that while conducting the research, the study team saw a striking difference in the wide range of air quality in the state.
“When you compare the areas that have the cleanest air, the air quality is up to nine times [900 percent] better than in dirty air areas,” he said. The worst areas for air pollution were the San Joaquin Valley and the South Coast air basin, he said.
Looking across the US, the ramifications literally translate to life and death.
“There’s probably 140,000 total deaths due to outdoor air pollution in the US,” said English. “If you say California is about 10% of that, that’s 14,000 deaths due to air pollution each year.”
Jose Luis Velez, founder of the southern California-based environmental justice group Comité Cívico Del Valle, said the statistics resonated with his experience of the pandemic.
“It’s a bad combination when you have a virus that attacks your respiratory system and your respiratory system is already compromised,” said Velez. “People aren’t understanding how deadly air pollution is. It’s out of control. We can’t just continue to ignore these issues. Our families, our kids, are getting sick. We have more respiratory problems than ever before.”
In Imperial County, where 85% of residents are Hispanic, there were 5,255 deaths from Covid-19 per million compared to 2,390 deaths per million statewide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
English said Imperial County was a “really highly polluted area with particulate matter.”
About 15.1% of Imperial County residents are affected by asthma and the county has twice as many pediatric, asthma-related emergency room visits and hospitalizations compared to the state’s average, according to a 2021 study by the University of California, Riverside, California.
In 2009, Comité Cívico Del Valle sued the EPA for its failure to hold the county accountable for federal air standards compliance. “They let the county go on and drag their feet and never put together a plan of how they’re going to get to compliance,” he said. The suit was settled in 2010.
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) commissioned the new study to get a detailed picture of the specific risks for people living in California, which ranks worst in air pollution in the nation.
The data should help inform new policies, said Bonnie Holmes, chief of the CARB health and exposure assessment branch.
“These studies underscore the critical importance of our air pollution control work, and that is the big policy implication,” she said.
California’s recent move to prohibit the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035 should help reduce air pollution, but will not solve the problem.
The new study concludes with a warning: “With the growing evidence from studies worldwide that suggest there is additional risk of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality associated with air pollution, reducing concentrations of air contaminants is now even more critical to protecting public health,” the study concludes.
(This story was originally published in The New Lede)
The Democratic Republic of Congo, had, less than a year before at the annual climate negotiation in Glasgow, signed on to a 10-year agreement to protect its rainforest, part of the vast Congo Basin. In shifting to extraction, they seem to be saying, basically, everyone’s doing it; why not us?
Congo is not alone in this choice. In 2015, Guyana discovered off-shore oil reserves. More recently, it is sprinting to exploit at least 11 billion additional barrels of oil off its coast. Like Congo, Guyana’s leadership says it will use the proceeds to improve the lives of its people – in this case, infrastructure and health and education systems.
It’s hard to fault an impoverished country with no historical responsibility for the fast-accelerating climate crisis for wading in at this late date to exploit their fossil fuel resources. And it is clearly impertinent, at the minimum, for those of us who have led gilded privileged lives rooted in huge fossil fuel consumption to fault a country that has decided to try to leverage its natural resources to better the lives of its people.
And there lies the dilemma. Congo itself sets up the choice as between global interest and national-interest, between saving the planet and earning revenue to help an impoverished country finance programs to support economic growth.
Yes, revenues will increase and we can hope they will be spent wisely. At the same time, extraction feeds the beast that inevitably makes their own countries less livable. It lets the wealthy countries off the hook, supporting their continued extravagant energy consumption.
The missing factor in Congo’s calculation is that extraction itself is far from costless. It has profound, permanent domestic impacts. These are hard to manage in normal times and in affluent countries. In the increasingly challenging conditions of a changed climate, countries should be focused on how to sustain life in uncertain times, when they may be thrown on their own resources to survive.
Countries that host extraction must live with the detritus of extraction, which is by definition intrusive. Even responsible extraction of natural resources imposes environmental costs. Digging hydrocarbons disrupts the landscape in a variety of ways. Ground is broken and earth is moved. Roads and power transmission corridors are cut through pristine areas. Workers and often their families must be housed and provided attendant services. All of this produces waste which must be disposed of or trucked out.
The activity of building roads and then the use of those roads and equipment introduces fuels and exhaust fumes. Extraction operations often use hazardous chemicals. Sometimes companies cheat and use illegal chemicals rather than those considered appropriate and for which there are technologies to capture and clean or separate. Offshore drilling brings its own set of disruptions. On land and at sea, there are oil spills that contaminate soil and water and may cause devastating explosions and fires.
All of this wreaks havoc on natural systems, fracturing the complex web of ecological interactions and processes that strain to support local life and downstream communities and cities, especially agriculture. Water is unclean or more toxic or less available as natural flows and connections between water bodies are irreparably cut. It is these flows that are essential for sustaining life. When mining finally leaves, lost topsoil, vegetation and forest cover constitute a broken natural chain that is rarely restorable.
Some impacts are obvious and visual, for example table top removal to extract coal. Others are more difficult to track and comprehend. When pollution enters an ecosystem, it is often difficult to trace its source and attribute responsibility. This is true even in countries with vast resources, empowered citizens with the tools and legal recourse to play a watch-dog role and well-functioning systems of law.
Dr. Lovelock’s legacy is the knowledge that destroying the living organism that is Earth has huge costs. Extraction and the exploration that leads to it breaks communities, piece by piece. Deciding to engage in these activities now comes at a very bad time in the history of the Earth and of human kind's existence on it.
Of course, companies promise to clean up their mess. Experience tells us not to rely on such promises – not only because promises are broken but because much of this damage is irreparable. Reconciling extraction and protection of the environment is an ongoing challenge even in places with well-established regulatory systems. Look at West Virginia, albeit a different kind of extraction. Despite requirements that coal companies remediate, bankruptcies of coal giants like Peabody have thrown into doubt who is responsible for abandoned strip mines and denuded mountains. Impoverished countries will have even less leverage to manage the damage when the corporations leave.
As climate change fully hits vulnerable countries, heat will buckle roads and rail beds; erratic precipitation will make hydropower unreliable and make it harder to move product on water, much less to provide for domestic water needs. There comes a point where working in the heat is not just oppressive but fatal.
It would be a bold option for these countries to take control of their destinies. One way to do this is to reject extraction and adopt a self-protective plan shifting to more fundamental but sustainable endeavors. A tortoise rather than hare strategy better positioning them for the inevitable shift could range from diversifying into alternate energy sources to water harvesting, dry farming and building soil capacity to retain water. These are all techniques recommended for water-poor, stressed geographies such as Gaza. The inevitable changes on the horizon argue for making a virtue of what has been seen in the past as a liability — small scale survival.
In an ideal world, the wealthier countries would contribute to this strategy, but realistically, help at scale from abroad is unlikely. Countries at risk have pleaded for climate adaptation or compensation funds – some of which could in theory help with these kinds of transitions. In reality, what funds that exist are chronically underfunded and unreliable. Congo came out of Glasgow with such promises, which it clearly decided were not sufficient.
Is this advice realistic? Maybe not, but humanity is in uncharted waters, meanwhile trying to pretend that everything is manageable. The truth is: any big challenge requires political will. Sometimes survival is achieved by defying conventional wisdom.
These are not easy choices, but rejecting extraction would engage a very different vision of self-interest. And one that might be more appropriate for the disaster we find ourselves in.
Ruth Greenspan Bell is a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, and affiliated with The Environmental Law Institute. Her views do not necessarily represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate, or publisher Environmental Health Sciences.
Environmental health is a branch of public health that monitors the relationship between human health and the environment, examining aspects of both our natural and human-made environment and their effect on human wellbeing.
Living near factories or heavy traffic worsens air quality and leads to health impacts on the lungs and heart.
Credit: Kouji Tsuru/Unsplash
Environmental health is a broad area of study — everything from the climate to the food we eat to the air we breathe plays into environmental health. A few specific examples include:
The role of environmental health research is to examine areas of the environment that impact our health so that we can make personal and policy changes to keep ourselves safe and improve human health and wellbeing.
Credit: Viki Mohamad/Unsplash
Environmental health impacts every one of us.
We reap the benefits of clean air, clean water, and healthy soil. If our environment is unhealthy, with toxic chemicals saturating our resources and pollution abundant, then our health also suffers.
It is also an important field of study because it looks at the “unseen” influences on your health.
Many individuals may not associate their health problems with air or water quality, or with what clothes they wear, makeup and household goods they use, or food they eat.
That’s because not every example of environmental health problems are obvious: some chemicals, for example, build up slowly over time in your body: a small dose may not seem to bring harm, but repeated small doses can lead to later impacts.
Also, individual susceptibility can differ: for example, one member of a household can experience illness, asthma, migraines, etc. from chemicals found in their water supply while another member of the same household is just fine, such as the case in a young girl’s reaction to benzene in her water from living near fracking wells.
Certain variables play a role in susceptibility and level of adverse health effects such as age, gender, pregnancy, and underlying health conditions. Studies suggest fetuses, infants and children are much more at risk to experience lifelong health problems from toxic chemical exposure.
Rate, duration, and frequency of exposure to toxic chemicals and other influences from our environment all factor into our health.
Good environmental health = good human health.
Two women extracting from a well in Senegal.
Credit: JordiRamisa
There are many environmental health issues that affect human health. These include:
Air pollution — nine out of 10 people currently breathe air that exceeds the World Health Organization’s guideline limits for air pollution worldwide. This mainly affects people in low and middle-income countries, but in the United States, people that live in cities, or near refineries or factories, are often affected as well.
Air pollution also ramps up during wildfire season.
Read more: Breathless: Pittsburgh's asthma epidemic and the fight to stop it
Water pollution — as of 2014, every year more people die from unsafe water than from all forms of violence, including war. Water is the ‘universal solvent’, meaning it can dissolve more substances than any other liquid on Earth. Thus, it is too easy for toxic chemicals to enter our water supply.
Read more: Sacred Water: Environmental justice in Indian Country
Lack of access to health care — yes, this is an environmental health issue! Having an accessible health care system is part of one’s environment. Difficulty getting health care can further impact one’s health.
Poor infrastructure — from “food deserts” to lack of transportation services, living in an area with poor infrastructure can impact your health.
Read more: Agents of Change: Amplifying neglected voices in environmental justice
Climate change — climate change-induced heat waves, increased frequency and severity of large storms, droughts, flooding, etc. have resulted in health problems and even death.
Chemical pollution — chemical pollution can be sneaky: the chemicals in your everyday products, from shampoo to deodorant to your clothing to the food you eat, can directly affect your health. These chemicals are often not on the label or regulated at all.
Read more: Exposed: How willful blindness keeps BPA on shelves and contaminating our bodies
Credit: instaphotos
Educate yourself. Environmental health is a broad topic, so this can seem overwhelming. Start by taking stock of your own personal environment. Look up air pollution monitoring in your area. Get your water tested to see its chemical makeup. Evaluate the products you use in your life — personal products like shampoo and deodorant, household cleaners, air fresheners, the foods that you eat — and see what you’re bringing into your home.
Explore the Environmental Working Group's guides to check your products for toxic chemicals.
We have additional guides to help you learn more about environmental health. Find guides to plastic pollution, environmental justice, glyphosate, BPA, PFAS and more in the Resources tab at the top of our website.
As individuals we have the power to improve some of our environmental health, but there is a pressing need for systemic change and regulation on a policy level.
We’re actively working with scientists to share their research and knowledge with politicians to advocate for science-backed policy change. But we need your help. Contact your representatives to let them know that environmental health is important to you — whether it’s air pollution in your area, contaminated water, plastic pollution, food deserts in your area, or chemicals in consumer products.
Subscribe to Above the Fold, our daily newsletter keeping you up-to-date on environmental health news.
For that reason, researchers decided to work on a second version of the EAT-Lancet Commission, an ambitious report that in 2019 created the first assessment of what food systems should look like in order to promote human health without destroying Earth.
The next report, called the EAT Lancet 2.0 that launched at the Stockholm+50 conference earlier this month, will expand on the previous version’s goal of creating resilient food systems in the face of pollution, climate change, pandemics, and armed conflicts. The work of the commission provides a scientific target for global food systems—specifically diets and farming—that can help countries achieve sustainable development goals and keep carbon emissions under the limits established by the Paris Agreement.
The new report will update numbers on the food system’s impacts on biodiversity, the impacts of pollutants—including pesticides, herbicides, and microplastics – in the marine ecosystem, and what a transition to a healthy diet for humans looks like. Unlike the first report, these suggestions will take into account culinary traditions, cultural differences, and environmental justice.
There is an “urgent need to put the science in front of all the decision makers on the safe boundaries of the food system,” said Johan Rockstrom at the conference. Rockstrom is director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and professor in Earth System Science at the University of Potsdam and environmental science at the Stockholm Resilience Center and one of the co-chairs of the EAT-Lancet commission.
It’s hard to give a clear, actionable path toward a sustainable food system. There’s no “1.5-degree target” for food systems, like the one included in the Paris Agreement for global temperatures, and mechanisms like an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) don’t exist for all the actors and sectors engaged in the global food system. In 2019, researchers from all over the world created the EAT-Lancet Commission to address this.
Leading scientists in nutrition, food science, agriculture, economics, and social science came together to figure out the impacts of current food systems on Earth’s planetary boundaries, which are global thresholds of nine biophysical processes of the Earth (things like ocean acidity, the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or the nitrogen cycle) that should not be exceeded so humanity can thrive and ecosystems can be preserved. The goal was to figure out what kind of human diet could keep us within these limits.
The initial report from the EAT-Lancet Commission on food, planet, health showed that four of nine planetary boundaries had been crossed because of human activity. Rockstrom said at the conference earlier this month that growing evidence shows the situation has become more severe—an article published in Nature in April 2022 suggests that a sixth planetary boundary has now been crossed.
“We continue to move in the wrong direction,” Rockstrom said, even as humanity enters the “most decisive decade” for its future. “The food system is the single largest economic sector causing the transgressing of planetary boundaries,” he added.
The beneficial impacts of healthy diets on human and planetary health could be significant, according to the commission’s first report. They found that feeding 10 billion people healthy diets within sustainable limits—that includes plant-based foods and low amounts of meat and highly processed foods—is not only possible, but can help prevent more than 11 million premature adult deaths per year.
The next report is expected in 2024, and it’ll include key changes. First, it’ll quantify the impacts of food systems on biodiversity—not just species extinction, but how food systems are threatening the stability of big ecosystems including the Amazon rainforest and wetlands, grasslands, and savannah systems.
The biodiversity lens will expand to the commission’s recommendations, as this time the report will not just consider the quantity of food available, but its quality and diversity, including its nutrient quality and its safety, said Shakuntala Thilsted at the conference. Thilsted is the Global Lead for Nutrition and Public Health at WorldFish and co-chair of the EAT-Lancet Commission.
Additionally, it’ll include the impacts of pollutants including pesticides, herbicides, and microplastics in the marine system, which was missing in the first report due to data availability, Rockstrom said.
Crucially, the next report will integrate the scientific consensus reached by the commission with dietary traditions of countries around the world. Thilstead said that the commission will invite new discussions regarding social justice and equity to ensure diverse, healthy, and sustainable diets for all people, including the poor and the vulnerable.
Including these two aspects could strengthen the reach of the report and acceptance of the commission, she added. The goal, she said, is to “leave no one behind.”
