Heat-related deaths, food insecurity and the spread of infectious diseases due to the climate crisis have reached record levels, according to a milestone. report.
The Lancet Countdown’s ninth report on health and climate change shows that people around the world face unprecedented threats to their health from the rapidly changing climate.
“This year’s assessment of the looming health threats from climate inaction reveals the most disturbing findings yet,” warned Dr Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown at University College London.
“Last year we once again broke climate change records, with extreme heatwaves, deadly weather and devastating wildfires affecting people around the world. No individual or economy on this planet is immune to the health threats of climate change.
“The relentless expansion of fossil fuels and record-breaking greenhouse gas emissions are exacerbating these dangerous health consequences and threaten to reverse the limited progress made to date and put a healthy future further out of reach.”
The report shows that in 2023, 48% of the global land area was affected by extreme drought that lasted at least a month, while people faced an unprecedented 50 days more of health-threatening temperatures than would have been expected without the climate crisis. As a result, an additional 151 million people faced moderate or severe food insecurity, putting them at risk of malnutrition and other harm to their health.
The number of heat-related deaths among people over 65 has increased by 167% in 2023 compared to the 1990s. Without the climate crisis, an aging global population means such deaths would have increased, but only by 65%. High temperatures also led to a record 6% more hours of sleep loss in 2023 than the average between 1986 and 2005. Poor sleep has a profound negative effect on physical and mental health.
The warmer and drier weather brought greater numbers of sand and dust storms, contributing to a 31% increase in the number of people exposed to dangerously high particulate matter concentrations, while life-threatening diseases such as dengue, malaria and West Nile virus continue to spread to new areas due to higher temperatures.
But despite this, “governments and corporations continue to invest in fossil fuels, resulting in unprecedented levels of greenhouse gas emissions and a staggering loss of trees, reducing the chances of survival for people around the world,” the authors note.
In 2023, global energy-related CO2 emissions reached a record high, 1.1% above 2022, and the share of fossil fuels in the global energy system increased for the first time in a decade in 2021, to 80.3% of all energy. .
Commenting on the findings, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, said: “The climate crisis is a health crisis. As the planet warms, the frequency and intensity of climate-related disasters increase, leaving no region unaffected.”
The report makes clear, he added, that “climate change is not a remote threat, but an immediate risk to health.”
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António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, said: “Record high emissions pose a record-breaking threat to our health. We must cure the disease of climate inaction – by cutting emissions, protecting people from climate extremes and ending our addiction to fossil fuels – to create a fairer, safer and healthier future for all.”
Temperate countries are also seeing the consequences of the climate crisis. Over the period 2013-2022, the overall average increase in heat-related deaths in Britain was estimated at nine deaths per 100,000 population, with 8.5 million potential working hours lost due to heat exposure by 2023.
Dr. Lea Berrang Ford, head of the Center for Climate and Health Security at the UK Health Security Agency, which published its own report on the health impacts of global warming on Britain, said: “Climate change is not just a future threat to health. The health consequences are already being felt both nationally and globally, and these risks will increase.
“There are significant opportunities for win-win solutions that can combat climate change and improve health. The health decisions we make today will determine the severity and extent of the climate impacts that today’s youth and their children will experience.”
Dr. Josh Foster, a lecturer in human environmental physiology at King’s College London, said the “alarming” trends in the report “would result in more frequent mass deaths among older people as the devastating impacts of climate change are realised”.