[Perspectives] Samuel S Myers: planetary health champion

Samuel S Myers, Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health (JHIPH) in Baltimore, MD, USA, has a stark message for health professionals: “As clinicians or as health practitioners, we can no longer do our jobs. We can no longer safeguard human health into the future while the natural life support systems that we all depend on are crumbling under the weight of our own ecological footprint.” When asked about solutions, he says: “To ensure a liveable future, we will need rapid transformational change in how we're living across all of our systems: food, energy, manufacturing, green chemistry, and the built environment.”