It took effect today so that's a step forward and there is Ryan Lucas reporting Democrats and Republicans are criticizing President Trump's decision to pull troops from northern Syria amid a threatened invasion by Turkey Trump says the move fulfills his promise to withdraw all from what he calls and list war in the Middle East critics say to force Kurdish allies to fend for themselves in the battle against ISIS and other extremist groups a federal appeals court is temporarily blocking the release of several years of President Trump's tax returns the ruling followed a lower court order to release the information to New York prosecutors investigating the Trump Organization the lower court also rejected the president's broad claim of the munity from criminal proceedings the end of a c.p.s. Calling for an independent investigation into the death of a key witness in the amber Geiger trial from Houston Public Media Saussure quarter has details 28 year old Joshua Brown was shot just days after he testified in the amber Geiger trial that's the case where the former Dallas police officer was sentenced to 10 years in prison for fatally shooting her neighbor both I'm John in his own apartment last year Dallas police are handling the investigation into Brown's death but the endl bill a c.p. Legal Defense and Educational Fund a once in independent probe after some raise questions as to whether Brown's testimony against Geiger was tied to the shooting Dallas mayor Eric Johnson is urging the public to stop speculating and allow the police to conduct a thorough investigation for n.p.r. News I'm Sasha Cordner in Houston some 28 Chinese companies are now on a Commerce Department trade blacklist they've been linked to an ongoing campaign of detaining Muslim minority groups in China's western region Xing Jang N.P.R.'s Emily Fang says The Blacklist is a major blow to companies that the jing hoped would become global tech giants among those blacklisted vision about why. Already 2 of the world's largest video surveillance companies many of those in Leicester heavily dependent on American technology components like semiconductor chips and such a ban will substantially disrupt the ability for some of these Chinese companies to continue operations and P.R.'s Emily Fang reporting from Hong Kong you're listening to n.p.r. News. The embattled leader of Hong Kong says her administration has no plans to use colonial era emergency powers to introduce new laws following another weekend of violent protests Carrie lamb invoked those powers last week after banning protesters from wearing face masks she warns that Chinese military could step in if the violence there gets worse lapsus tourism is is down sharply in Hong Kong and that the unrest is likely to affect the city's 3rd quarter economic data lawyers for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have wrapped up their arguments in the corruption case against their client as Naomi several off reports hearings in the case ended on Monday the hearings which began last week and concluded Monday are part of the process leading up to possible indictments against the prime minister the attorney general is expected to decide by the end of this year whether to charge you know for bribery fraud and breach of trust Netanyahu has called the allegations against him a which had if he is indicted it's not clear that he'll step down the hearings come at a time of political turmoil for Netanyahu and the country Israel's president handed Netanyahu the 1st chance of form your government after the deadlock September 17th elections so far Netanyahu lacks the support in Parliament to succeed for n.p.r. News I'm Naomi's Eveleigh Intel of the on Wall Street stocks fell as investors away the next round of u.s. China trade talks scheduled to resume this week the Dow Jones industrial average rose 95 points the Nasdaq fell 26 on Asian markets shares are higher up one percent in Tokyo this is n.p.r. News in Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include a Life Lock Life Lock with Norton offer cyber security solutions to help keep hackers out of consumers' devices learn more at Life Lock dot com and the listeners who support this n.p.r. Station. But the the but the. Welcome to forum I'm Michael Krasny we know that climate change is severely affecting the health of our planet it's also affecting our health a warmer planet means a longer allergy season and higher air pollution for periods of extreme hot weather can trigger congestive heart failure worsen kidney conditions and exacerbate mental health issues and there is the anxiety and distress that can come with a rapidly changing environment Joining us to discuss the toll climate change can take on our mental physical health is Paul Auerbach He's professor emeritus of emergency medicine at Stanford at the University Medical Center and also co-author of an viral medics the impact of climate change on human health and welcome Professor are back with have you with us good morning Michael thank you good morning to you and we also want to welcome Robin Cooper who's here with us in studio psychiatrist in private practice in San Francisco and co-founder of climate psychiatry Alliance Welcome to the program thank you I'm glad to be here glad to have you with us here in the car but let me begin with you and let's begin by just talking about what we know generally at this point we know certainly that extreme weather and sea level rise are really affecting all kinds of illnesses and creating all kinds of problems in our physical health Scott set out for us if you could. The list of health related effects from climate change are is is enormous There are the obvious that you mentioned the heat waves the heat stress the extreme weather events floods hurricanes etc But there are many others that haven't come to the forefront yet like the migration of vectors like mosquitoes and other creatures that cause communicable diseases that will move as the pine it warms you have a supporter of mental health expert on the show with us which is terrific because there are profound mental health the facts and. Then all the issues related to lack of access to clean water migration of people food security the issue of increased allergic exposures the harmful algal blooms that we're seeing from microorganisms that are proliferating in the ocean and then the broader range of problems that will relate eventually to lack of biodiversity to the erosion of ecosystem services all the interrelationships and how it all winds in so it's quite an impressive West and an overwhelming listen anyways I mean one of staggered at just all the things that can result or that can be consequential from climate change and you mentioned mental health let's bring Robin Cooper into this what are the main things you find of that you really need citizens to be aware of in terms of the effect and impact on mental health problems Well let me start 1st with just kind of alerting people climate change is a health emergency it's a mental health emergency and a health emergency and I think in regards to the mental health impacts people tend to think about that that kind of things that you can easily relate to how traumatic they post traumatic stress and rooms and depression when people lose huge amounts of things in their lives due to the enormous weather related disasters what we know about the wildfires what we know about floods what we know about the impact from hurricanes it some. Posttraumatic stress is enormous What I think is much much less understood are that there are profound behavioral thinking problems psychiatric problems that are specifically related just to heat extremes themselves to air pollution that people 10. To think about air pollution as affecting their asthma lung disease but it actually has a very specific attacks on that on the brain and pervasiveness affects throughout the life cycle so I think it's important just as our previous speaker spoke that the mental health impacts are very diverse and very extensive and very serious want to add because they also include things like more aggression and violence you kind of alluded to this or intimated about it but it's definitely cause and effect we're talking about Absolutely heat extremes we all kind of know this when in our colloquial language hot under the collar I'm so angry my blood is boiling or the admonition. Be cool man. When we're really angry he actually but our scientific evidence supports this we really know that heat extreme heat impact aggression anger and make it much more difficult for people who are vulnerable to not being able to control their behavior to act on their aggression and anger that has very specific impacts for domestic violence for impacts on women and children and I'm very concerned about that Robyn Cooper get a psychiatrist in private practice in San Francisco co-founder of climate psychiatry Alliance Parvati's professor emeritus of emergency medicine at Stanford Medical Center and co-author of an viral medics the impact of climate change on human health I want to go back to you Professor Bach and to talk about since this was alluded to by Robin Cooper the vulnerable populations who turn out to be well the most vulnerable as one would expect the greatest impact in fact on health and physical health is on poor people and on the youngest of the oldest but also on minority communities and on immigrants and homeless and disabled Absolutely and that's been well studied and before I address that I'd just like to go back for a 2nd and just add. To what Robin said because there's a whole nother large overlay on this mental health issue which relates to socially disadvantaged populations which is this general increase in cultural anxiety people are feeling somewhat helpless in the face of this and having been a disaster responder in the past you walk into really nasty situations and it can seem overwhelming and you can you can question your ability to do anything and I think we're facing that now a little bit and part of this because it's not necessarily a happy talk is to be real but to say there are absolutely things that we can do that might not have immediate effect but if we all pull together in unprecedented ways based on modern times and the political situation we can make progress and we can start to turn things around I don't want people to give up hope but well Tara what specifically are you talking about here because we need that help I think you're absolutely right in bringing it up here because you can get really down to thinking about what we're talking about well this is this is a problem we can solve for if we have the will to solve for it it's not a 0 sum game I think we have to start looking at the fact that we're going to need to make changes just with regard to the climate and how we approach our economic system some of the industries that we support and the changes that will have to make in the way that people live their lives in order to protect their men to reverse the degradation that we're imposing on the planet and that takes a collective will it takes functional governments it takes citizen response it takes polling ourselves up now and realizing that we're in the biggest battle that we've ever faced this is. Uncharted territory so I'm not laying blame anywhere I'm saying Ok we've got a problem now let's bring the best and brightest minds together and let's deal with it and as you said it affects disproportionately people who can't take care of themselves it's it's hard to argue with someone not to burn fuel in a kerosene stove when they need to do that to survive so we have to give people alternatives we have to be able to present people that are displaced with places to live and health care and hope and respect and all the social determinants of health that go into having a functioning properly oriented society and a big Covey and I think from you Dr Cooper is don't panic don't panic the Chronicle put out a piece this weekend about panic let me just address and I can't agree more fully with the comments that have already been made but let me go back to some of these distress and Durham's that I think we're all kind of preoccupied with now this kind of. Term it's a shorthand climate eco anxiety climate anxiety that's a shorthand term for lots and lots of big feelings and it is absolutely appropriate for us to have anxiety worry our brains are wired for us to have intense feelings when there are threats and this is a real threat in fact I learned a new term Thanks to your research fellow said you know this is something that's uncertain terms about existential grief and psychic distress of people feel over well the concern over their homeland and the environmental changes that have to do also with child psychological development those going right let's go without you. It's a fancy word and it kind it relates to that intense distress but from the staff looking back on what used to be that intense grief when we experience the lack of ability to soothe ourselves from our environment and those soothing places that we used to get solace from that's only one component and I think we're spirit seeing much more now people who are in acute states of worry and anxiety and as I say those are the feelings that alert us to do something when we're in danger the trouble is when the when the emotions are so big so intense so overwhelming that we can't contain them into manageable ways to respond we also have brains that that can be planned full and strategic and that's really important to engender that sense that there are things we can do and that we can make a difference in important ways both ensued in these very very big feelings but I'm not also in the game of just let's feel good I want us to translate that big energy from big feelings to actual effective action though I'm with you there I think that our buck is in many of our listeners are but from a mental health standpoint this can be overwhelming when you think about really what you think we're all facing here I mean particular when you're thinking about children of the future and when young people are thinking about their future and so forth it can be downright depressing and it is for many people as you discover know that your practice Absolutely I say I'm sorry. I see this in my practice I see this in my practice mostly when there's an intrusion from some awful event health that has just happened parents who came in a mom. Ad give us some sense of what you tell your patients and I want to go to Professor about his I know he wants in here I mean some specific tools that people can have other than you know I can exercise my will I can do something and maybe compel yourself in that fashion toward action it's not what I tell my patients it's not that I tell my patients that's not my job as a psychotherapist my pet my job with a psychotherapist is to listen understand that our date and help to them to contain their feelings so that they can translate that into effect of waves to make a difference in behaviors in their lives and in the worlds they live in we have to say look after that it's the scope of psychotherapy we can help but psychotherapy isn't the place that's certainly not and that has to come from them I understand that there are but you want it in here well I'm I'm with that 100 percent because I think I'm going to say it just a slightly different way and that is in my experience action is the is the overwhelming solution to the inert behaviors that we see when people get depressed it's getting them up out of bed it's getting them to begin to engage in the activities of daily living and it's to find solutions through self-help and through empowerment so this all comes to how do we begin to relate to each other in no less polarizing fashion. How do we get climate change to be a problem that we all are going to face through whatever means we have through our expertise through our governments etc The medical profession is starting to step up big time to support this we serve. Certainly need our governments to step up and begin to put aside their relentless differences and start to act in a functioning way to support the people that they were elected to support. We need to integrate environmental responsibility into our own lives granted that won't have the same impact as reforming the fossil fuel industry but it gets everybody on the same page about the importance of it and I would say that the single most important factor is to take a personal responsibility for your fellow human beings it's really easy to step back and say it's not my problem but it is our problem now those are good I think those are very good and important and valuable sentiments the fact is though there's so much that we have no control over when we're talking about extreme events like hurricanes and floods and the effect that they have and people psychologically or the destruction that it causes and wreaks in people's lives these are things that along with pollution along with some of the other things we've touched upon here that we we don't know that many things in our toolkits to the fight against I think that's where it becomes so frustrating for many people and your thoughts Dr Cooper I actually don't see it that way I actually think we're more stuck in it is so big all of the things that you've outlined that promotes a kind of psychological defensive retreat there's nothing I can do I might as well back off I actually don't think that's true I think that there are many many ways and I strongly think that both for managing our own feelings but also for affective involvement in the many many ways that collaboratively. Add up there is an incredible importance to fend off the kind of hopelessness you've outlined in your friend hurricane psychologic know that you can act and you can act in ways that are collaborative with other people the worst thing to do is to retreat into personal isolation the most healing thing to do is to engage with others in shared action I want to brilliant psychological intervention from our leader Nancy Pelosi don't agonize organize and there is a place for everyone to move with groups of people outside of that isolation in many ways to have contributions I think it's like viewing a puzzle and there are pieces of the puzzle that all add up together and that can go across the board Paul are back with a voice are getting and I think that sound advice from Robin Hooper about for example we have to worry about our nutrition because food is being affected by climate change we have to worry about such things as children and how they're going to be born into this world and the effect on pregnancies and so forth she's talking about collaborative efforts and really talking about people putting their best feet forward and that helps in almost every domain. Well I'm I'm more of a blocker and tackler So I agree with everything she said and that's that's the rallying cry but we have to do many things simultaneously but if I was asked to just divide it into 2 basic approaches to this number one is we need to fix curtail modify what we're doing to ruin the environment but at the same time you've mentioned there are some things that are inevitable if we do everything perfectly if we don't put another molecule of carbon dioxide into the air for the next 30 years we're still going to have warming and sea level rise so I work in the emergency department I see it common it's already here and so we have to have effective mitigation strategies for what's inevitable on that's where and it is like the National Center for Disaster medicine and public health come in that's where we get good advice out to people that's where we fire proof communities that's where we start to deal with the actual crises that we're facing now we can't just fix the future we'r