It was one afternoon in September, when a middle-aged construction worker nearly collapsed in my clinic from heat exhaustion, that I understood that climate change is an immediate reality rather than a distant concern. In Brooklyn, extreme heat, flooding, and dirty air are shaping who gets sick and who stays well. We can’t keep treating it as an abstract environmental debate when it is deepening health disparities and its long-term impacts in our communities right now.
As a physician in a public hospital serving central Brooklyn, my patients are the individuals who keep this borough running: bus operators, nursing assistants and aides, deli workers, church volunteers, and grandparents who have lived their entire lives in communities like Flatbush, Brownsville and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Like many Brooklyn residents, my background has instilled in me an appreciation for communal living and the importance of supporting neighbors. I uphold these core values as they are the foundation for a strong community. When I hear my patients say “I skipped my medications to pay electricity or heating bills,” or older patients say to me, “I could not come out the house because of too much heat,” it reminds me of the concerns across several narratives: making sure our children can breathe clean air, keeping our homes safe, and protecting our elders.
It is also important to recognise that some everyday activities in Brooklyn contribute to the very climate pressures harming our health. Heavy use of cars for short trips, particularly in neighborhoods with limited public transit access, increases local air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Older residential buildings rely on oil or gas for heating, and these release significant carbon into the atmosphere, while inefficient insulation forces families to use more energy just to stay comfortable. These aren’t individual shortcomings; they are structural realities. However, recognizing them helps us understand why climate change is accelerating and the importance of including both infrastructure upgrades and community‑level behavior change…