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Available open access digitally under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
Climate change is transforming the lives of older people, who face increased risks from extreme heat, climate-related disasters, air pollution and shifting disease patterns.
This groundbreaking volume examines why older adults are disproportionately affected and how these vulnerabilities intersect with social, economic and health inequalities. The book also moves beyond vulnerability, showcasing older people as active contributors to climate change activism and resilience.
Bringing together international research spanning gerontology, public health, anthropology and urban planning, the book maps the rapidly developing field of ageing and climate change and outlines practical pathways for building age-inclusive climate responses.
Karl Pillemer is a Hazel E. Reed Professor of Human Development at Cornell University and Professor of Gerontology in Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine.
Liat Ayalon is Professor in the Louis and Gabi Weisfeld School of Social Work at Bar-Ilan University and Chair of the Impact Center for the Study of Older Age and Ageism.
1. Introduction
Part I: Vulnerability of Older People
2. Climate Change and the Health of Older Adults - Ruth McDermott-Levy and Erica Kathryn Husser
3. Population Aging and Extreme Heat: Patterns, Projections, and Consequences for Older Adults’ Well-Being - Deborah Carr, Giacomo Falchetta, and Ian Sue Wing
4. Air Pollution and Frailty in the Age of Climate Change: Anthropological Insights into Aging and Environmental Health - Sayani Das and Liat Ayalon
Part II: Place, Aging, and Climate Change
5. Quietly Displaced and Conveniently Forgotten: A Case for Older Climate Migrants and Refugees - Senjooti Roy and Liat Ayalon
6. Aging and Radical Environmental Change: Why Don’t They Just Leave? - Marlene Friis, Jeanette Gustat, and Katie Cherry
7. Aging in Place in a Changing Climate: Reimagining Age-Friendly Cities and Communities - Ryan Woolrych
8. The Role of Natural Places in the Context of Climate Change and Aging - Selma Korlat and Jana Nikitin
Part III: Social and Family Contexts
9. Social Relations and Climate Change: Risk, Resilience, and Opportunity - Noah Webster, Toni Antonucci, and Robert Marans
10. Intergenerational Relations in the Age of Climate Change - Liat Ayalon, Zeyu Liu, and Karl Pillemer
Part IV: Caregiving in the Context of Climate Change
11. The “Five C’s of Climate Change and Caregiving”: Moving from Catastrophic to Cohesive Caregiving for Older Adults - Angela Perone, Taylor Brown, Kate Fletcher, and Leixuri Urrutia-Pujana
12. Long-Term Care and Climate Change - Andrea E. Schmidt and Ernest Aigner
Part V: Climate Resilience and Action
13. Climate Resilience in Older Adults - Alexandra Holland, Sadaf Arefi Milani, and Andreea Seritan
14. Coping with Heat in Older Age: A Synthesis of Health Behavior Change and Coping Models - Victoria Michalowski, Jennifer Lay, Dwight Tse, Helene H. Fung, and Theresa Pauly
15. Climate Change, Poverty, Food Insecurity, and Aging: Adaptive Strategies of Older Persons in Africa amid the Triple Jeopardy - Mayeso Chinseu Lazaro, Senjooti Roy, and Liat Ayalon
16. Older People as Agents of Change - Karl Pillemer, Julia Nolte, Marie Tillema Cope, Frances McMillan, Ashley Park, Gargi Rao, Chloe Shores, and Haojing Zhu
Part VI: Policy Approaches
17. Building Climate Resilience for an Aging Population: Exploring Policies and Programs Through a Social Connectedness Lens - Jacklyn Kohon, Dani Himes, and Bryant Carlson
18. Health Care Response to Climate Change and Aging - Matthew Luebke, Emily Frey, Arnab Ghosh, Lena Makaroun, Mark Lachs, and Karl Pillemer
19. Data, Methods, and Approaches for Studying Climate Change and Healthy Aging - Paola Zaninotto, Matthew Prina, Samia Akhter-Khan, and Yu-Tzu Wu
20. Research Priorities for Aging and Climate Change - Liat Ayalon and Karl Pillemer