First, we have to achieve consensus that environmental health is a public health issue.
One of my proposals is to use the military to fight climate change. How we will achieve that needs full cooperation and more than one plan, and there is no way to do that until we get to sit down, look at the data, assess resources, etc.
It seems as if we are getting closer to consensus, due to all the hardship so many of us are experiencing: Wildfires, floods, air and water pollution, etc.
As President, I would bring together our most experienced public servants and historians, find out how each department is working (or not working) now and how it worked in the past. Find out where the overlap and conflicts are, and then we would figure out how to work together.
The main thing is to be united in a common goal. There is a good chance that a lot of issues are being addressed already, but these are piecemeal and most of us don't know about them.
When people are kept in the dark, we often jump to conclusions and actions based upon previous personal experiences. This is true whether we are talking about a musician who defaults to a familiar chord progression, a politician who assumes that a concerned citizen is just resisting to resist, or a policeman who sees someone reaching into their pocket for a wallet and assumes it is a gun.
So, I would encourage more journalism education and focus on solutions journalism and jobs that heal the planet.
What we need is a completely different mind set at the top. Our country needs to be led by someone the exact opposite of who is there now. The President sets the mood for the country, and that affects the rest of the world.
We need a communicator in the White House who shares a first person perspective with a majority of Americans and can therefore empathize and seek solutions to their unique pain points. This is about more than just winning an election:
It is about restoring and representing the soul of America's humanity.
(Note: The above is an excerpt from an online conversation.)
--- MT