A fundamental challenge of sustainability is to maintain and improve human well-being for present and future generations. Ensuring clean air is a major challenge worldwide, and this is fundamentally linked to the challenge of climate change. Pollutants that degrade air quality and leads to climate change come from common sources, like power plants and vehicles, and climate change can also make air quality worse, through wildfires and warmer temperatures. Addressing both air pollution and climate change simultaneously is key to ensuring human health and well-being both today and in the future. I argue for a people-centered approach to thinking about these issues as sustainability challenges, in order to identify solutions. Noelle Eckley Selin is an Associate Professor in the Institute for Data, Systems and Society and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Her research uses atmospheric chemistry modeling to inform decision-making on air pollution, climate change and hazardous substances such as mercury and persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Professor Selin received her PhD from Harvard University in Earth and Planetary Sciences as part of the Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling Group, where she developed and evaluated a global, 3D model of mercury pollution. Prior to her current appointment, she was a research scientist with the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. In addition to her scientific work, she has published articles and book chapters on the interactions between science and policy in international environmental negotiations, in particular focusing on global efforts to regulate hazardous substances. Previously, she was a research associate with the Initiative on Science and Technology for Sustainability at Harvard’s Kennedy School, a visiting researcher at the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen, Denmark, and worked on chemicals issues at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. On campus, Professor Selin is also affiliated with the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and the MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx