According to doctors, global “fossil fuel addiction” is causing climate change, which has worsened public health globally each year by causing starvation in almost 100 million people and an increase in heat-related mortality of 68% in vulnerable groups.
According to a paper published earlier this week in the esteemed medical magazine Lancet, the burning of coal, oil, natural gas, and biomass causes air pollution that kills 1. 2 million people annually globally.
Fossil fuels are in charge of our health, according to climate expert and Lancet Countdown executive director Marina Romanello.
“We’re seeing a persistent addiction to fossil fuels that are not only amplifying the health impacts of climate change but which is also now at this point compounding with other concurrent crises that we’re globally facing.
“Nearly 100 academics from around the world highlighted 43 indicators where climate change is making people sicker or weaker in the yearly publication, Lancet Countdown.
And the effects of climate change on health are escalating quickly, Romanello added.
Even more frankly than the doctors, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres praised the findings.
“We are dying because of the climate disaster.
According to a new estimate in the paper, “days of excessive heat are becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change, resulting in 98 million additional cases of self-reported hunger worldwide in 2020 as compared to 1981–2010.
In 103 nations, researchers discovered that 26.4% of the population suffered “food insecurity,” which would have been 22.7% in a world without the effects of climate change, according to Romanello.
“Can I say that climate change is to blame for all food insecurity? Obviously not. But it is a very significant contributor and it’s only going to get worse,” said pediatrician and Lancet Countdown co-chair Dr Anthony Costello.
Computerized simulations, according to him, also indicate an increase in the number of heat-related deaths each year, which went from 187,000 in 2000 to 2004 to an average of 312,000 in recent years.
When there are heat waves like the record-shattering 2020 one in the Pacific Northwest or this summer’s English heat wave, emergency room doctors know when they go to the hospital “we’re in for a challenging shift”, said study co-author Dr Renee Salas, a Boston emergency room physician and professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Burning coal, oil, and gas also contributes to air pollution, which affects 1.
According to the scientists and report, there are 2 million fatalities caused by airborne tiny particles each year. According to Salas, the 1. 2 million figure is supported by “immense scientific data.”
Children’s asthma and cardiac issues have been linked to the burning of coal or gas in power plants.
A little boy who lives adjacent to a highway where cars emit harmful pollutants and where wildfire smoke, pollen, and ozone pollution are rising due to climate change won’t benefit from having an inhaler prescribed to him.
Globally, “fossil fuel addiction” claims 1.2 million lives each year.
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