Leaders see hope in tackling deadly climate change and public health problems together WPXI [Video]

NEW YORK — (AP) — Trying to lessen climate change’s sweeping impact, experts are hoping that attempts to improve the sputtering global public health system and sometimes-stalled efforts to curb global warming through collaboration can combine — and create a better system for handling the problem along the way.

Leaders of both the World Health Organization and the upcoming climate negotiations said Monday that for the first time, they are going to devote a day during December climate talks to public health issues. By concentrating on how climate change is causing death and disease, they hope, nations may act more on the root cause: carbon pollution.

“Climate change is killing us, and climate change is a health crisis,” said Vanessa Kerry, the World Health Organization’s special envoy for health and climate change, CEO of Seed Global Health and the daughter of U.S. climate envoy John Kerry. “We shouldn’t be measuring our failures …