Climate Action
Five Ways To Define Health With Five Experts
April 23, 2026
Earthday.org’s 2026 theme, “Our Power, Our Planet,” asks a simple but urgent question: what kind of future are we building with our hands? We talked to five experts whose answers, though different in focus, all return to the idea of well-being.
Together, our guests show that health is larger than medicine alone, tying our ecosystem, political environment, and economy into one living body. Each conversation invites listeners to view Earth Week not just as a call to cut waste and save power, but also as an invitation to protect the conditions that allow us to live, work, and thrive as parts of a bigger picture.
Planetary and Human Health with Dr. Carlos A. Faerron Guzmán
What I saw in that indigenous territory was that the environment was not something that was a backdrop to health, it was more or less the foundation of health.
Dr. Carlos A. Faerron Guzmán, Global Health Professional
For Dr. Carlos A. Faerron Guzmán, health begins long before a person enters a clinic. It begins in the soil, the water, the air, and the systems that make life possible. Drawing on his experience working in an indigenous territory in Southern Costa Rica, he reflects on the limits of urban way of thinking that treats the effects of the environment on human health as secondary to medical treatment.
Dr. Guzmán highlights how human health begins with the surrounding environment, showing that when we use our power to protect the planet, we also protect the conditions that keep us healthy.
Political Health with Bob Inglis
I think we’re getting to the point where we’ve just had enough of the basic trash talk in politics.
Bob Inglis, Former Congressman
Bob Inglis enters the discussion asking what happens when public life becomes so politically divided that even clean air and water are treated as partisan matters. Looking back at the first Earth Day and its spirit of bipartisan agreement, Inglis suggests that the country may be reaching a point of exhaustion with empty conflict for conflict’s sake.
As a former Republican congressman, Inglis emphasizes that the message of environmental action should be spoken in many political languages for all sides to get behind it. Through this conversation about finding a common ground, Inglis shows how power lies in people getting together to make a change, no matter what side of debate they are on.
Community Health with Jason Walsh
A transition that is truly fair or just for workers is not gonna happen organically.
Jason Walsh, Executive Director of the BlueGreen Alliance
Jason Walsh speaks from long experience at the intersection of policy-making and environmental advocacy. He challenges the idea that getting rid of fossil fuel jobs harms the workers, explaining that introduction of green jobs would bring improved benefits, pay, and stability.
Instead of waging war between environmentalists and union workers or silently waiting for the quality of life to progress, Walsh calls for a coalition aimed at bettering conditions for everyone.
His words point toward a broader definition of community health, one that includes security and fairness as much as it includes jobs. Walsh offers a path in which communities are not sacrificed in the name of progress but deliberately included in it, calling for the fossil fuel workers to use their power in numbers to push for greener policies and a better future.
Ecosystem Health with Ashish Kapoor
There’s no cloud, there’s steel and concrete on the ground and there’s infrastructure impacts. And who pays for those impacts? We do.
Ashish Kapoor, Senior energy and climate advisor at Piedmont Environmental Council
Ashish Kapoor brings ecosystem health down to the ground level, where abstract ideas about technology meet the realities of land, water, air, and human health. Speaking about the rapid spread of AI-powering data centers, especially in Virginia, Kapoor challenges the illusion that digital exists outside of the material world.
Yet, this is not simply a warning, Kapoor also points toward the practical forms of power communities still possess: local listening, coalition-building, and policy, encouraging the listeners to leverage that power for the sake of our own well-being.
Economic and Future Health with Efrem Bycer
The world is changing. And workers who have green skills, they know how to deal with change.
Efrem Bycer, Workforce and Climate Policy Partnerships Coordinator, LinkedIn
Efrem Brycer from LinkedIn introduces to us the future through the lens of economic health. His focus is the growing gap between the demand for green skills and the number of workers prepared to fill that need.
Taking care of economic health sometimes means learning green skills and getting ready to apply them in fields one might least expect: from management and software engineering to insurance and marketing.
This reflects how the power to shape a more sustainable future is not monopolized by any one industry, but shared across many kinds of work, giving more people the opportunity to contribute to a healthier future.
Stay A-Tuned to the Planet
Taken together, these five conversations offer a broad understanding of what health really means in the age of climate crisis and political unrest. Sign up to receive these and future podcasts as soon as they are released and stay connected to the urgent conversations shaping our shared world.