The effects of climate warming, including severe heat waves, drought, and air pollution, are constantly worsening in the world, causing millions of deaths, according to what the medical journal “The Lancet” reported Wednesday in a report it publishes annually.
The Lancet Countdown report, which is prepared annually by about a hundred researchers from all countries of the world in coordination with University College London and in cooperation with the World Health Organization based on the latest scientific findings, stated that “climate change threatens health at an unprecedented level.”
This message echoes previous versions of the report as average global temperatures continue to rise, a trend fueled by fossil fuel use that will reach a new record high in 2024.
The report, which was published a few weeks before the COP30 conference in Brazil, pointed to a number of consequences of warming that have consequences on health, the most prominent of which are heat waves that particularly affect the elderly and infants, drought that threatens the food security of millions of people, air pollution, and forest fires.
The report provided for the first time estimated numbers of deaths associated with some of these phenomena.
According to its authors, the average death of people from heat-related causes reached 546,000 annually between 2012 and 2021, which constitutes a significant increase compared to the numbers during the 1990s. Smoke from forest fires will kill 154,000 people in 2024.
More broadly, air pollution linked to fossil fuels caused more than 2.5 million deaths in 2022, according to the report.
The report indicated that there are “millions of preventable deaths annually” as a result of governments’ failure to combat climate warming.
As in previous editions, the report’s authors regretted the continued government support for fossil fuels. This support is significantly reflected in the public assistance that many European countries provide to their residents to reduce energy bills, which have risen sharply against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.
But the report pointed to a broader “regression” at the level of public policies, and in this context pointed to the decline in development aid provided by rich countries to poorer countries, which is often necessary to adapt to warming.
Although this trend is largely due to the radical cuts made by the administration of US President Donald Trump, other Western countries, such as Germany and France, in turn bear responsibility for this decline in this aid.