HHS says it is working to prevent a climate disaster. But it’s actually just a weather wash

The United States Department of Health and Human Services has said it will do everything in its power to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the health care industry. The evidence suggests that it is a climate wash.

Climate laundering is defined as a government or business providing insufficient, inaccurate, misleading, or incorrect information to the public about its climate policy aspirations or enforcement efforts. of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, especially when claims are made without independent third-party assurance. Simply put, climate washing means simultaneously engaging in positive discussions about climate action and negative climate trends.

According to Columbia Law School’s Automotive News, the first climate-washing lawsuits were filed in 2016, both against Exxon Mobile Corporation. Since then, the number of these cases has increased significantly. More than half of the 120 climate-washing cases so far were filed in the past two years; 44 of them in the US Of the 60 cases decided until 2023, 42 were in favor of the plaintiffs; 25 of them in the last two years.

Three years ago this month, HHS created the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity (OCCHE). The White House ordered HHS by executive order to create the office because the Biden administration promised in April 2021 a 50% to 52% reduction in 2005 levels of greenhouse gas pollution by 2030 to protect public health and to promote environmental justice.

In establishing the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said, “the investments we make today to protect health from climate change will pay dividends for generations to come.” coming to reduce the cost of health care to address this challenge.” In response to a reporter’s question, Becerra said, “we’re going to use everything — every tool we have” to reduce or mitigate. greenhouse gas emissions.

Three years later, these comments still look like weather washing.

A “top priority” for the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity is to support HHS’s regulatory efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At more than 550 million metric tons, US healthcare annually emits more than four times the greenhouse gas emissions of Exxon, Marathon Petroleum, Phillips 66, Chevron, and BP.

However, the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity has done little to regulate, either independently or in collaboration with any other HHS function (the OCCHE is within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health), to reduce the production of health care, even in joint seats. , and the National Academy of Medicine, a collaborative action to decarbonize health care that began in September 2021. This failure may occur due to a large part of the truth of Becerra has not yet I argued for funding for the office in the testimony of the congressional budget three years ago. age.

The Office of Climate Change and Health Equity is instead more focused on trying to build a sustainable climate, HHS’s 2021 “Climate Action Plan” and report the 2023 “Climate Change and Health Policy Reform”.

Unlike solving a problem or reducing carbon emissions, climate resilience or adaptation assumes that climate change is inevitable, which is the same thing. Resilience teaches acceptance or adaptation to chronic climate disasters and “is always about how the poor need to adapt,” said Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann in their book “Climate Leviathan.” HHS’s resilience strategy is highlighted in the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity’s efforts over the past two years to publish a monthly climate and health report that alerts the public to disasters​​​​ upcoming weather.

Within the free OCCHE is the Office of Environmental Justice. It was established in May 2022 and aims to protect the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable people who have been disproportionately affected by environmental hazards. The office’s primary focus is to support the Biden Administration’s Justice40 program, which was designed to allocate 40% of federal climate-related funding to communities burdened by environmental pollution. The Office of Environmental Justice, however, has done nothing to reduce health care emissions. This is very disappointing because none of the 13 Justice40 HHS programs so far are working to reduce industrial emissions.

HHS has repeatedly stated that it strives to achieve health equity that is “inextricably linked to environmental justice,” yet its recently published environmental justice report is anything but what it can say about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Under OCCHE, Becerra announced by 2022 a voluntary climate commitment in which health care organizations pledge to meet the Biden administration’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50%. Commitment describes raw fish. Commitments are not required to use sustainable accounting methods such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. They are not required to use the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star Portfolio Manager program, which in part measures greenhouse emissions, nor are they required to report any progress publicly. There is no action whatsoever.

HHS’s 2022-2026 strategic plan includes Strategic Objective 2.4. It says HHS is “investing in strategies to reduce the impacts of environmental factors including climate change on health outcomes.” Among the strategies identified to achieve this goal are the use of HHS’s “tools” to “mitigate . . . climate change” and implement “interdisciplinary efforts among health system stakeholders public and private sectors to make health care more environmentally sustainable.” My review of HHS’s FY 2023, FY 2024, and FY 2025 annual performance reports shows that the department has not made measurable progress toward this goal.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is responsible for administering Medicare and Medicaid, is among the operational units at HHS assigned to achieve Goal 2.4. CMS has not yet promulgated Medicare or Medicaid rules that would require and/or financially encourage health care providers, particularly hospitals, to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. This is a missed opportunity, because of the nearly 3,500 hospitals that participate in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program, which allows participants to measure their energy use, only 37 (1%) are Energy Star certified in the year the past for energy efficiency.

CMS has also not provided a discussion on reducing Medicare and Medicaid greenhouse gas emissions in its strategic plan, national quality plan, health equity plan, and policy outlook. and priorities of the CMS Innovation Center.

In the recently published patient hospital rule, CMS finalized a policy that allows a small number of selected hospitals to participate in a five-year Medicare demonstration to voluntarily report to HHS their greenhouse gas emissions. But since any hospital can do this at any time, the proposed policy creates an illusion of control that is designed to achieve nothing.

CMS, or HHS more broadly, has yet to publicly acknowledge the White House’s September 2023 White House fact sheet that directed the federal Office of Control and Budget to establish the primary public cost of greenhouse gas emissions, e.g. , Medicare and Medicaid. By calculation, the public cost of greenhouse gas emissions amounts to $3.6 trillion per year. HHS has also failed to publicly comment on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s climate disclosure rule that was finalized last March — EPA and others have commented — even though the health care industry bo good is facing significant climate-related financial shocks.

HHS’s failure to protect Americans from climate damage over the past three years is tantamount to a climate washout. The Department has not used any tool in its toolbox, certainly not management tools, to deal with the climate crisis. Its failure is particularly vexing because HHS effectively controls a $4.9 trillion market that accounts for more than half of annual health care spending worldwide.

Because global warming equates to an increase in greenhouse gases, and US emissions exceed those of any other country, the US government, particularly HHS, has a major responsibility to end our reliance on the same with fuel. This is especially true if HHS cares about intergenerational justice. As Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1789, “the world is governed by the living.”

David Introcaso, Ph.D., is a Washington, DC-based health research and policy consultant whose work focuses on the climate crisis.