A study concluded that “fossil fuel addiction” degrades public health, arguing that burning coal, oil and natural gas kills 1.2 million people a year worldwide.
According to a report in the scientific journal Lancet, there are 11,800 deaths from air pollution in the United States alone.
“Our health is at the mercy of fossil fuels,” said Marina Romanello, a health and climate researcher at University College London and executive director of the Lancet Countdown.
Extreme weather caused by climate change has starved nearly 100 million people and increased heat deaths by 68% in vulnerable populations around the world.
“We are seeing a persistent addiction to fossil fuels that is not only increasing the health impacts of climate change, but is now also on top of other simultaneous crises we are facing globally, including the Covid-19 pandemic, the cost of living. , the energy crisis and the food crisis, which were unleashed after the war in Ukraine,” Romanello said.
In the annual Lancet Countdown, which looks at climate change and health, nearly 100 researchers from around the world highlighted 43 indicators that point to more illness in people, with a new look at hunger added this year.
Praising the report, the Secretary General of the United Nations Organization (UN), António Guterres, was even more direct than the doctors: “The climate crisis is killing us.”
A new analysis in the report found 98 million more cases of famine worldwide in 2020, compared to 1981-2010, on “extreme hot days,” which are increasing “in frequency and intensity due to climate change.”
The researchers looked at 103 countries and found that 26.4% of the population experienced what scientists call “food insecurity,” and in a simulated world without the effects of climate change, that would have been just 22.7%, according to Romanello.
Computer epidemiological modeling also reveals an increase in annual heat-related deaths from 187,000 per year between 2000 and 2004 to an annual average of 312,000 per year during the last five years.
The researchers further explained that the estimated 1.2 million deaths a year worldwide from small airborne particles are based on “immense scientific evidence,” according to Harvard School of Public Health professor Renee Salas.
“The burning of gasoline in cars or coal in power plants has been found to cause asthma in children and heart problems. Prescribing an inhaler will not solve the cause of an asthma attack for a child who lives near a road where Cars produce dangerous pollutants and climate change is increasing wildfire smoke, pollen and ozone pollution,” he said.
University of Calgary professor of medicine Courtney Howard, who was not part of the study, said the Lancet report shows an increase in deaths from air pollution and heat, warning that people “continue to behave like usual despite known damage.
“Until now, our treatment of our addiction to fossil fuels has been ineffective,” he concluded.
Source: TSF
