Climate change, driven by fossil fuel emissions, is raising temperatures to dangerous new heights, while also worsening drought and food security, a new report by doctors and health experts warned on Tuesday (Oct 29).
The record temperatures of 2023 – the hottest year on record – meant the average person experienced 50 more days of dangerous temperatures than they would have without climate change, according to the Lancet Countdown, an annual report based on work by dozens of experts, academic institutions, and UN agencies, including the World Health Organization.
Especially vulnerable are the elderly, with the number of heat-related deaths in people over 65 last year reaching a level 167 per cent above the number of such deaths in the 1990s. Without climate change, researchers would have expected that number to rise by 65 per cent from the 1990s, the report said.
“Year on year, the deaths directly associated with climate change are increasing,” said Marina Belén Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown.
“But heat is also affecting not just the mortality and increasing deaths, but also increasing the diseases and the pathologies associated with heat exposure,” she said.
For example, people who exercise outdoors are increasingly at risk, she said. Companies are facing limited capacity for working outdoors.
