Climate change poses a growing threat to human health in a variety of record-breaking ways, a major report said Wednesday, the experts warning that “wasted time has been paid in lives”.
The new report was released as heat waves, fires, hurricanes, droughts and floods have lashed the world during what is expected to surpass 2023 to become the hottest year on record.
It also comes just weeks before the United Nations COP29 talks are held in Azerbaijan — and days before a US election that could see climate change sceptic Donald Trump return to the White House.
The eighth Lancet Countdown on health and climate change, developed by 122 experts including from UN agencies such as the World Health Organization, painted a dire picture of death and delay.
Out of 15 indicators that the experts have been tracking over the last eight years, 10 have “reached concerning new records,” the report said.
These included the increasing extreme weather events, elderly deaths from heat, spread of infectious diseases, and people going without food as droughts and floods hit crops.
Lancet Countdown executive director Marina Romanello told AFP the report showed there are “record threats to the health and survival of people in every country, to levels we have never seen before”.
For people at home, Romanello advised a climate-friendly diet, traveling without burning dirty energy, ditching banks that invest in fossil fuels and voting for politicians promising greater action on global warming.
