On March 15, a gunman killed 50 people, and injured dozens more, at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The attack, which was the deadliest in the country’s recent history, was made even more horrible by happening near the time of Friday Prayer, one of the central rituals of Islam. While the investigation into the shooting is still ongoing, the alleged shooter reportedly wrote a manifesto espousing anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and white supremacist beliefs.

That same day, in the US, President Donald Trump continued his efforts to build a wall between the US and Mexico, vetoing a Congressional resolution that would have blocked his declaration of a national emergency along the southern border. Such a wall would fulfil his often-stated campaign promise to reject immigrants who ostensibly threaten the country’s “security,” immigrants about whom the President has spoken in disparaging terms, using an expletiveto refer to countries with predominantly nonwhite populations and callingundocumented immigrants “animals.”

Over the last year, we have seen high profile suicides that have gripped our attention—from Kate Spade, to Anthony Bourdain, to, most recently, the tragic death of Parkland shooting survivor Sydney Aiello. It is often recognized, correctly, that suicide is highly linked to mental illness, particularly depression. That, in and of itself, is ample reason for us to think carefully about mental illness and its consequences, but before I tackle the issue of suicide, I want to comment, more foundationally, on why mental health should matter, and be more central to our attention in health. 

In recent weeks, the political conversation has been animated by talk of a Green New Deal (GND). The idea behind the GND, unveiled last month as a Congressional resolution by Senator Ed Markey and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is to tackle the threat of climate change through a series of wide-ranging reforms. The goals of the GND address not just the challenge of reducing carbon emissions, but the underlying socioeconomic inequities that gave rise to climate change. These goals include overhauling the country’s transportation system, providing universal health care, creating a federal jobs guarantee, and investing in infrastructure. They reflect the plan’s broader call for social and economic justice, workers’ rights, and greater investment in public goods. Through these aspirations, the GND acknowledges that carbon emissions are just the tip of the (rapidly melting) climate change iceberg, that the problem is the sum of deeper, structural challenges, and that solving climate change means using public policy to tackle the problem at every level of society, addressing not just the science of climate change, but the injustice that created the crisis in the first place.

During the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt and his allies instituted a sweeping program of reforms to address the crisis. These reforms, known collectively as the New Deal, went beyond economic recovery, to reimagine the role of government in American life.

Today, our political debate is animated by talk of a Green New Deal. Like its namesake, the Green New Deal is a response to a crisis: climate change. It calls for a transformation of the American economy and social contract on a scale not seen since the days of FDR. Its suggested reforms include providing universal healthcare, creating a federal jobs guarantee and securing broader investment public goods. These measures tackle the core socio-economic injustices that underlie climate change.

In recent weeks, talk of a Green New Deal has moved to the center of our political debate. The Green New Deal aims to address climate change by tackling the underlying socioeconomic inequities that gave rise to the crisis. It calls for overhauling the country’s transportation system, providing universal healthcare, creating a federal jobs guarantee, investing in infrastructure, and other goals.

This ambition echoes the scope of the original New Deal, another wide-ranging political program that was born out of crisis. In the 1930s, President Roosevelt and his allies used the shock of the Great Depression to transform the relationship between government and citizen through a series of reforms addressing the injustices at the heart of the economic crisis.