Bill Frist spent twelve years in the United States Senate, four of them as the top Republican leader. He was a surgeon who pioneered heart transplants. He supported the Iraq War. And for most of his political career, environmental groups gave him terrible grades — just 7 percent lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters. He even voted for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
But something changed. Today, Frist has become one of the most unexpected voices in the fight against climate change, and he is trying to do something that few politicians attempt: bring Republicans and Democrats together on an issue that has torn them apart.
His approach is simple but powerful. Instead of talking about carbon emissions or melting ice caps, Frist talks about something everyone can understand: health. "A healthier planet means healthier people. The science shows it. Our experience shows it. Nobody can really argue against that," he says.
Frist, who grew up on five acres in Tennessee, connects environmental issues to real human problems. He has written about how air pollution speeds up memory loss in aging adults. He made a video explaining how ecosystem collapse harms children's brain development by reducing their exposure to helpful microbes. In 2023, he stood before the Senate Budget Committee and showed data proving that rising temperatures make healthcare more expensive for everyone.
"Our national leadership too often has failed to connect those dots with what the urgency of today requires," Frist admitted.
His personal journey toward this view was shaped by his wife Tracy, who studied animal and human behavior and now runs programs to restore wetlands and rivers on their farms in Tennessee and Virginia. "She is born of nature, is part of it, it is written into her soul," Frist said. Tracy helped him see the connections between the natural world and human wellbeing. As a transplant surgeon, Frist had already glimpsed this truth: a drug called cyclosporine, derived from soil fungus, made organ transplants possible by stopping the body from rejecting new hearts and kidneys. "It hit me, the power of nature and biodiversity," he said.
Now Frist is co-chair of the Health Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, and he is writing a book about how climate and nature shape human health. His goal is to depolarize — or remove the political poison from — the climate conversation.
It is an uphill battle. Recent polling shows only 6 percent of Republicans say they are worried about climate change. But Frist believes change is coming. "There's a very small group of us right-of-center climate advocates," said Alex Flint, who leads a conservative group supporting carbon taxes. "It's lonely." But both men see a shift ahead. As rising temperatures drive up hospital bills and farmers face changing seasons, Frist believes more Americans will follow his lead — putting health, not politics, first.