The article sheds light on the stark disparity between global spending on COVID-19 and the climate change health impact, highlighting a critical gap in addressing climate-related health issues. In 2022, Europe experienced a devastating heatwave, leading to the deaths of over 61,672 people, many of whom had pre-existing health conditions like heart and lung diseases. These deaths, exacerbated by temperatures increased 160 times by climate change, underscore the urgent need to focus on the climate change health impact.
Attribution science, a field that determines the role of climate change in specific weather events, has made it possible to quantify deaths directly related to climate-induced extremities. The cumulative death toll since 2000 is estimated to be on track to exceed 4 million by 2024, surpassing the population of Berlin. This alarming statistic is often unrecognized by both the victims’ families and governments, failing to acknowledge the true extent of the climate change health impact.
Colin Carlson, a US climate epidemiologist, emphasizes that the majority of these deaths are from malaria in Africa and malnutrition and diarrheal disease in South Asia, predominantly affecting young children. Carlson advocates for a paradigm shift in how we perceive and respond to the climate emergency, a view echoed by others in the health and epidemiology community.
The methodology for estimating climate-related deaths, developed by Australian epidemiologist Anthony McMichael in the early 2000s, includes factors like floods, malnutrition, diarrhoea, malaria, and cardiovascular disease. However, this method underestimates the death toll as it does not account for several other climate-induced threats. Climate change is now killing nearly as many people annually as the population of Geneva.
Comparatively, the global response to COVID-19, which claimed seven million lives, received significantly more financial attention, with governments committing over €8.2 trillion. In contrast, only €132 million of climate adaptation funds are allocated to health annually, a negligible amount in the face of a crisis causing mass death on a pandemic-like scale.
Carlson’s commentary calls for substantive commitments from national governments to address the climate change health impact, including access to essential medicines, quality care, and basic necessities like food and clean water. He also advocates for the advancement of predictive modeling in climate mortality to better anticipate and prevent future crises.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has long recognized climate change as a global crisis, predicting additional deaths due to malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea, and heat stress. However, the ongoing nature of the climate crisis does not fit the criteria for a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, calling for a more sustained, long-term approach to health adaptation and climate resilience.