Resilience SOS: How to Save Kids’ Minds, Lungs, and Housing

Replete with heart-wrenching photos of tiny children sucking on inhalers, enduring insect welts, and watching flood waters rise, a new report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) details the grueling impacts climate change is having and is likely to have on America’s kids. Socially vulnerable youth will be disproportionately affected.

The five biggest stressors

Climate Change and Children’s Health and Well-Being in the United States crunches data for different temperature and sea-level deltas, expressing the potential damage in hard numbers while using both words and imagery to illustrate the mental health toll that global heating is already taking and is likely to exacerbate. Researchers looked at five “climate stressors,” three of which fall within the immediate purview of building professionals as they consider sustainability and resilience interventions. The five stressors and their major expected impacts are: