This book provides a unique perspective on the multidimensional aspects of the health impacts of climate change and air pollution, which include the science, impacts, solutions, and advocacy of the solutions. The book is intended to add a new approach to climate change by focusing on its health impacts from a multidisci-plinary understanding that can be used for academic, political, faith, community, and activism purposes. The authors of the 33 chapters have expertise in an impres-sive array of topics relevant to the book. We have attempted to make the text in the scientific chapters less technical and more understandable by nonscientists, yet the book has enough technical background and scientific rigor to make it relevant to higher education and professional entities and individuals for use in teaching and practice.

More importantly, we have made it freely available online to reach every individual across the globe, including traditionally less involved populations and regions that are most affected by the consequences of climate change.Even though the influence of humans on climate change has been established through extensive published evidence and reports, the connection between climate change, the health of the planet, and the impacts on human health has not received the same level of attention. Therefore, the global focus on the public health impacts of climate change is a recent area of interest triggered by two recent international initiatives, one by the World Health Organization and the other by The Lancet, known as the Lancet Commission on Climate Change and Health. The majority of the previous work on the health impacts of climate change was limited to epidemio-logical approaches and outcomes, and less focused on multidisciplinary, multifac-eted collaboration between physical scientists, public health researchers, and policy makers. Further, the context of faith and ethics as the underpinning of such multi-disciplinary approaches was not previously explored.

Faith in God and the health of people are universal. Eighty-four percent of the world’s 7.3 billion people are affiliated with some religion (Christians 31.2%; Muslims 24.1%; unaffiliated 16%; Hindus 15.1%; Buddhists 6.9%; folk religions 5.7%; other religions 0.8%; Jews 0.2%) (Hackett & McClendon, 2017). While not everyone in the world is religious, about eight in ten are religious and the rest are affected by the religious beliefs of the many around them. However, the health of humans involves everyone. One hundred percent of the world’s population are somewhere on the continuum of good health to poor health.While religion and health usually are studied under different academic disci-plines, practical experience combines them in most lives. As Pope Francis asserted in Laudato Si’, “everything is interrelated” (Catholic Ecology, 2015). We cannot conflate religion and human health, but we can seek to connect them. It is a chal-lenging task because there is generally greater consensus on health than on reli-gion. Moreover, there are different starting points. In broad terms, religion tends to start with God and faith, while science starts with research and predictability. That said, Christians are more likely to begin with God and move on to health and the environment, while “some non-Western religious traditions, like Hinduism, make a tighter link between representations of the divine and nature” (Ecklund & Scheitle, 2018)

Interfaith dialogue on the health of people, the health of the planet, and our respon-sibility is most valuable and important when focused on humanitarian needs. Collaboration and cooperation are best suited to helping those suffering from floods, droughts, crop failures, famines, migration, and other cataclysmic events, regardless of the causes. When crises come to countries and communities of varied religions, all people of faith should step forward to rescue and restore together

The gravity of the environmental impacts of climate change on human health, the planet’s ecosystem, and the intercorrelations between them—to the degree that it is threatening our very existence and the natural systems that sustain the planet—is real. We therefore need to act immediately and in a holistic approach to be able to make a difference.