188 - Election Series: What's At Stake With Climate Change and the Environment?
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2020
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As part of our election series, Stephanie Desmon talks with Dr. Tom Burke, the EPA's science advisor during the Obama administration. They discuss this critical moment after huge reversals of environmental gains in the US, how the reputation of science has affected critical policy decisions, and what's at stake for everything from the quality of drinking water to the dangers of forest fires and hurricanes if regulation continues to be relaxed. They also talk about who is impacted the most from climate change regulation in the US and how rollbacks of regulations have made some communities even more susceptible to the harms of COVID-19.
KEYWORDS: renewable energy; natural disaster; health equity
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 2 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.6 | I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, |
| 0:18.7 | and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:21.9 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence and experience to the public health news of the day |
| 0:27.3 | through informative interviews with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public health |
| 0:32.7 | officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas or questions for us to cover, please email us at |
| 0:39.8 | Public Health Question at jhhhu.edu. That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast |
| 0:47.8 | episodes. Today, as part of our election series, Stephanie Desmond talks to Tom Burke, a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School |
| 0:55.6 | of Public Health professor and the Environmental Protection Agency's science advisor during the |
| 1:00.3 | Obama administration. They discuss what's at stake in the upcoming elections when it comes to |
| 1:05.8 | the environment. Let's listen. Tom Burke, thanks so much for joining me. |
| 1:10.9 | Oh, thanks for having me. |
| 1:12.3 | So today I'd like to talk about what's at stake with the environment in this upcoming election. |
| 1:18.7 | I'm so glad to be here today and that you asked me that because there is so much at stake with the environment. |
| 1:25.0 | This is a really critical election. |
| 1:27.0 | The public, the voters have a clear |
| 1:29.3 | choice, very different perspectives, one being aimed toward ending regulation and relaxing the |
| 1:36.8 | burden on industry. And in the name of that, unfortunately, we've had a tremendous reversal |
| 1:42.1 | of our environmental gains in this country, whether it was the quality of our drinking water or climate. |
| 1:48.5 | And so there are clear choices here, very big differences, and it's important. |
| 1:54.3 | I think the American public really cares about the environment and our health, and the environment is essential to good health. |
| 2:00.9 | So with the backbone of all of these environmental discussions really is science. And I know that |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.