By mid-century ie 2050, the yearly heat-related deaths are likely to increase nearly fivefold the current numbers with people over 65 years old at higher risk if business as usual continues and there is no substantial progress on adaptation, a report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change has warned.
Heatwaves alone could lead to 524.9 million additional people experiencing moderate-to-severe food insecurity by 2041-60, aggravating the global risk of malnutrition while there is an increased spread of life-threatening infectious diseases, with the length of coastline suitable for Vibrio pathogens expanding by 17-25 per cent, and the transmission potential for dengue increasing by 36-37 per cent.
Vibrio pathogens are responsible for food-borne diseases such as cholera. With 1,337 tonnes of CO2 emitted every second, each moment of delay worsens the risks to people’s health and survival, it said adding that the projections are an indication of what the future looks like because as “risks rise, so will the costs and challenges of adaptation.”
The report has been prepared on the basis of the expertise of 114 scientists and health practitioners from 52 research institutions and UN agencies worldwide.
The report said that this was “substantially higher than the 38 per cent increase that would have been expected had temperatures not changed”.
Despite such instances, the 2023 report found that the world is “often moving in the wrong direction”, even as the 2022 Lancet Countdown report highlighted an “opportunity to accelerate the transition away from health-harming fossil fuels in response to the global energy crisis”.
As of early 2023, the strategies of the world’s 20 largest oil and gas companies will result in emissions surpassing levels consistent with the Paris Agreement goals by 173 per cent in 2040, an increase of 61 per cent from 2022, the report predicted.
Meanwhile, global fossil fuel investment increased by 10 per cent in 2022, reaching over $1 trillion, with oil and gas extractive activities being supported through both private and public financial flows, the report found.
With little progress in transitioning to clean energy, the persistent use and expansion of fossil fuels will ensure an increasingly inequitable future that threatens the lives of billions of people alive today, it said.
In this context, the transition to renewables can enable access to decentralised clean energy, which could help avoid deaths due to exposure to dirty-fuel-derived, outdoor, airborne, fine particulate matter pollution as well as indoor air pollution, the report said.
The pace and scale of mitigation efforts continued to fall very far short of those required to safeguard people’s safety, with current policies putting the world on track for a potentially catastrophic 2.7 degrees Celsius of heating by 2100, the report warned.
