Web Desk (National Times) – Extreme weather from climate change triggered hunger in nearly 100 million people and increased heat deaths by 68% in vulnerable populations worldwide as the world\u2019s \u201cfossil fuel addiction\u201d degrades public health each year, doctors reported in a new study.<\/p>\n
Worldwide the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and biomass forms air pollution that kills 1.2 million people a year, including 11,800 in the United States, according to a report Tuesday in the prestigious medical journal Lancet.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur health is at the mercy of fossil fuels,\u201d said University College of London health and climate researcher Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a persistent addiction to fossil fuels that is not only amplifying the health impacts of climate change, but which is also now at this point compounding with other concurrent crises that we\u2019re globally facing, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, energy crisis and food crisis that were triggered after the war in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the annual Lancet Countdown, which looks at climate change and health, nearly 100 researchers across the globe highlighted 43 indicators where climate change is making people sicker or weaker, with a new look at hunger added this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the health impacts of climate change are rapidly increasing,\u201d Romanello said.<\/p>\n
In praising the report, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres put it even more bluntly than the doctors: \u201cThe climate crisis is killing us.\u201d<\/p>\n
New analysis in the report blamed 98 million more cases of self-reported hunger around the world in 2020, compared to 1981-2010, on \u201cdays of extreme heat increasing in frequency and intensity due to climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Researchers looked at 103 countries and found that 26.4% of the population experienced what scientists call \u201cfood insecurity\u201d and in a simulated world without climate change\u2019s effects that would have only been 22.7%, Romanello said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan I say that every bit of food insecurity is due to climate change? Of course not. But we think that in this complex web of causes, it is a very significant contributor and it\u2019s only going to get worse,\u201d said pediatrician Dr. Anthony Costello, Lancet Countdown co-chair and head of the University College of London\u2019s Global Health Institute.<\/p>\n
Computerized epidemiology models also show an increase in annual heat related deaths from 187,000 a year from 2000 to 2004 to an annual average of 312,000 a year the last five years, Romanello said.<\/p>\n
When there\u2019s a heat wave, like the record-shattering 2020 one in the Pacific Northwest or this summer\u2019s English heat wave, emergency room doctors know when they go to the hospital \u201cwe\u2019re in for a challenging shift,\u201d said study co-author Dr. Renee Salas, a Boston emergency room physician and professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.<\/p>\n
The air pollution from burning coal, oil and gas also pollutes the air, causing about 1.2 million deaths a year worldwide from small particles in the air, the scientists and report said. The 1.2 million figure is based on \u201cimmense scientific evidence,\u201d Harvard\u2019s Salas said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBurning gas in cars or coal in electricity plants have been found to cause asthma in children and cause heart problems,\u201d Salas said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrescribing an inhaler isn\u2019t going to fix the cause of an asthma attack for a young boy living next to a highway where cars are producing dangerous pollutants and climate change is driving increases in wildfire smoke, pollen and ozone pollution,\u201d Salas said.<\/p>\n
Both air pollution and heat deaths are bigger problems for the elderly and the very young and especially the poor, said University of Louisville environmental health professor Natasha DeJarnett, a study co-author.<\/p>\n
Sacoby Wilson, a professor of environmental health at the University of Maryland who wasn\u2019t part of the report, said the Lancet study makes sense and frames climate change\u2019s effects on health in a powerful way.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are dying now as we speak. Droughts, desertification, not having food, flooding, tsunamis,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing what happened in Pakistan. What you see happening in Nigeria. \u201d<\/p>\n
Both Wilson and emergency room physician and professor of medicine at the University of Calgary Dr. Courtney Howard, who wasn\u2019t part of the study, said report authors are correct to call the problem an addiction to fossil fuels, similar to being addicted to harmful drugs.<\/p>\n
The Lancet report shows the increasing deaths from air pollution and heat yet people are \u201ccontinuing in habitual behavior despite known harms,\u201d which is the definition of addiction, Howard said. \u201cThus far our treatment of our fossil fuel addiction has been ineffective.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t a rare cancer that we don\u2019t have a treatment for,\u201d Salas said. \u201cWe know the treatment we need. We just need the willpower from all of us and our leaders to make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Web Desk (National Times) – Extreme weather from climate change triggered hunger in nearly 100 million people and increased heat deaths by 68% in vulnerable populations worldwide as the world\u2019s \u201cfossil fuel addiction\u201d degrades public health each year, doctors reported in a new study. Worldwide the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and biomass forms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n