Nearly five times as many people will likely die from extreme heat in the coming decades, an international panel of experts said Wednesday, warning that without action on climate change “humanity’s health is at grave risk.”
The deadly heat was just one of many ways the world’s ever-increasing use of fossil fuels threatens human health, according to The Lancet Countdown, a major annual assessment carried out by leading researchers and institutions.
More frequent droughts will put millions at risk of starvation, mosquitoes spreading farther than ever will carry infectious diseases with them and health systems will struggle to cope with the burden, researchers have warned.
The dire estimate comes during what is expected to be the warmest year in human history — just last week, Europe’s climate watchdog said last month was the warmest October on record.
It also comes ahead of the COP28 climate talks in Dubai later this month, which will host a ‘health day’ for the first time on December 3 as experts try to shed light on the health effects of global warming.
Despite growing calls for global action, energy-related carbon emissions hit new highs last year, the Lancet Countdown report says, singling out still-huge government subsidies and private bank investments in fossil fuels as warming the planet.
Last year people around the world were exposed to an average of 86 days in life-threatening temperatures, according to the Lancet Countdown study. About 60 percent of those days were twice as likely because of climate change, he said.
The number of people over 65 who died from heat increased by 85 percent from 1991-2000 to 2013-2022, he added.
Also read: 2023 is likely to be the hottest year on record
“However, these effects we are seeing today could just be an early symptom of a very dangerous future,” said Lancet Countdown executive director Marina Romanello.
Under a scenario in which the world warms two degrees Celsius by the end of the century — currently on track for 2.7 degrees Celsius — annual heat-related deaths are projected to increase by 370 percent until 2050. This means 4.7 times increase.
About 520 million more people will experience moderate or severe food insecurity by mid-century, according to projections.
And mosquito-borne infectious diseases will continue to spread to new areas. Dengue transmission would increase by 36 percent in a 2 degree Celsius warming scenario, the study found.
Meanwhile, more than a quarter of cities polled by researchers said they were worried climate change would overwhelm their ability to cope.
“We’re dealing with a crisis on top of a crisis,” said Georgiana Gordon-Strachan of the Lancet Countdown, whose home country of Jamaica is currently in the midst of a dengue epidemic.
“People living in poorer countries, who are often less responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, bear the brunt of the health impacts,” he said.
Read: High-income countries’ ‘green growth’ falling short of target: Experts
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told an online conference presenting the Lancet Countdown report that limiting warming to the Paris agreement’s goal of 1.5 degrees is a “public health imperative.”
“The world is moving in the wrong direction, unable to curb its addiction to fossil fuels and leaving vulnerable communities behind in the much-needed energy transition,” Tedros said.
On Tuesday, the UN warned that countries’ current pledges would reduce global carbon emissions by just two percent by 2030 from 2019 levels – far short of the 43 percent drop needed to limit warming to 1, 5 degrees Celsius.
Romanello warned that unless more progress is made on emissions, then “the increasing emphasis on health in the context of climate change negotiations risks being just empty words”.
However, there are “rays of hope”, he added.
The number of global deaths linked to air pollution from fossil fuels has fallen by 16 percent since 2005, largely thanks to efforts to reduce the impact of burning coal, the report said.
Global investment in green energy rose 15% to $1.6 trillion last year, compared with $1 trillion for fossil fuels.
And if people switched to healthier, low-carbon diets, it would prevent up to 12 million deaths a year, while cutting emissions from dairy and red meat production by 57 percent, the report said.
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