BLOG: Women physicians on Mother Earth
I have always considered myself an environmentalist, but I did not get truly passionate/slightly obsessed until I had children.
I cannot exactly explain why I was not more fired up before that because I certainly cared. I remember as a child, my father, a chemist, used to have jars around the yard to collect rainwater. My brother and I used to make fun of the precious collection, but he was measuring levels of acid rain. He made us turn off the lights religiously, and the house was always a little too hot in the summer because the thermostat was off limits. I still had these habits deeply embedded in my psyche, but I did not picture myself marching in protests. We cannot dwell on the past but only move forward.
Whether we think of ourselves as privileged or not, many physicians or physician families fall into the “1%” category of having a yearly income of more than $450,000 or close to it. We have a personal responsibility with our actions such as not switching out our gas-guzzler SUVs every couple years, not throwing away our clothes and cutting down on air travel.
Even if we all lived like monks, though, policy change is what will restructure our world. We need to be active. We as physicians have an incredibly powerful voice that we can raise in defense of this planet and the people on it.
Read the full blog post at Women in Medicine Summit.
For more information:
Elizabeth Cerceo, MD, FACP, FHM, is a hospitalist and associate professor of medicine at the Cooper University Hospital/Cooper Medical School of Rowan University. She can be reached at cerceo-elizabeth@cooperhealth.edu.
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