Climate change has caused severe harm to human health since the year 2000 by stoking more heat waves, the spread of some mosquito-borne diseases and undernutrition as crops fail, scientists said yesterday.
Scant action to slow global warming over the past 25 years has jeopardized “human life and livelihoods,” they wrote in a report published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.
“The human symptoms of climate change are unequivocal and potentially irreversible,” said the report, Lancet Countdown, drawn up by 24 groups, including universities, the World Bank and the WHO.
Many governments are now trying to cut their greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, though US President Donald Trump has weakened the pact by saying the US, the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas polluter after China, would pull out.
“This [report] is a huge wake-up call,” said Christiana Figueres, chair of Lancet Countdown’s high-level advisory board and the UN climate chief at the Paris summit. “The impacts of climate change are here and now.”
Among its findings, the report said an additional 125 million vulnerable people had been exposed to heat waves each year from 2000 to last year, with the elderly especially at risk.
Labor productivity among farm workers fell by 5.3 percent since the year 2000, mainly because sweltering conditions sapped the strength of workers in nations from India to Brazil.
The report, based on 40 indicators of climate and health, said climate change seemed to be making it easier for mosquitoes to spread dengue fever, which infects up to 100 million people a year.
The number of undernourished people in 30 nations across Africa and Asia rose to 422 million last year from 398 million in 1990, it said.
“Undernutrition is identified as the largest health impact of climate change in the 21st century,” the report added.
However, despite the overall gloom, Anthony Costello, a director at the WHO and joint chair of the Lancet Countdown study, said there were “significant glimmers of hope” in the situation.
The number of weather-related disasters, such as hurricanes and floods, rose 46 percent since 2000, but the number of deaths remained stable, suggesting that societies were improving protection measures against environmental catastrophes.
Almost 200 nations are to meet in Bonn, Germany, from Monday next week to Nov. 17 to work on a “rule book” for the Paris climate agreement for shifting from fossil fuels.
The Lancet Countdown study did not estimate the total number of deaths from climate change. The WHO has previously estimated there could be 250,000 extra deaths a year between 2030 and 2050 because of climate change.
Lancet Countdown executive director Nick Watts said there could be a few benefits from warmer temperatures, such as fewer deaths from winter cold in nations from Russia to Canada.
“But those numbers are ... almost negligible,” he said compared with the overall harm from global warming.
The study also said that the air in 87 percent of all cities, home to billions of people, exceeded pollution guidelines set by the WHO.
Fossil fuels release both toxins and heat-trapping carbon dioxide when burnt.
Stockholm Resilience Centre director Johan Rockstrom, who was not involved in the study, said the report could bolster efforts to limit pollution in cities from Beijing to Mexico City.
“Air pollution is in a way an old issue, but it’s potentially coming to the forefront again as the most rapid vehicle to get action on climate change,” Rockstrom said, referring to decades of efforts to limit smog.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
SKEPTICAL: Given the challenges, which include waste disposal and potential domestic opposition, experts warn that the 2032 nuclear timeline is overambitious Indonesia is hoping going nuclear can help it meet soaring energy demand while taming emissions, but faces serious challenges to its goal of a first small modular reactor by 2032. Its first experiment with nuclear energy dates to February 1965, when then-Indonesian president Sukarno inaugurated a test reactor. Sixty years later, Southeast Asia’s largest economy has three research reactors, but no nuclear power plants for electricity. Abundant reserves of polluting coal have so far met the enormous archipelago’s energy needs, but “nuclear will be necessary to constrain the rise of and eventually reduce emissions,” said Philip Andrews-Speed, a senior research fellow at the
RSS