Bodies and minds are just as affected by climate change as sea ice and forests, says University of Alberta scientist Sherilee Harper.

“Climate change impacts everything we care about,” she said. “It’s not just an environmental issue.”

That’s why Harper, along with 30 or so colleagues from disciplines as wide-ranging as economics and epidemiology, have banded together into what she calls Canada’s first university hub to shift the view of climate change from an environmental problem to a threat to human health.

“The hub is about helping people see that every climate change decision is a health decision,” said Harper, a professor in the School of Public Health and a vice-chair on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading scientific body on the issue.