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.
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 percent above the number of such deaths in the 1990s. Without climate change, researchers would have expected that number to rise by 65 percent 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.
In fact, last year’s extreme heat cost the world an estimated 512 billion potential labor hours, worth hundreds of billions of dollars in potential income, the report said.
“Similar to what we saw with the COVID-19 pandemic, it is key workers who tend to be most exposed and unable to shield as easily during heatwaves, such as those working in one of our many hospitals without air conditioning, or outdoor construction workers,” said data scientist Nathan Cheetham at King’s College London in a statement. Cheetham was not involved in the study.
Climate change is also making food more unreliable, the authors warned.
With up to 48 percent of the world’s land area facing extreme drought conditions last year, the researchers said, about 151 million more people would be experiencing food insecurity as a result, compared with the years 1981-2010.
Extreme rainfall last year also affected roughly 60 percent of lands, unleashing floods and raising risks from water contamination or infectious disease.
The study’s authors urged the upcoming UN climate summit, COP29, to direct climate finance toward public health. The COP29 talks begin Nov. 11 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday called on countries to “cure the sickness of climate inaction” by slashing fossil fuel use and emissions in order “to create a fairer, safer, and healthier future for all.”
Climate change is making temperatures deadlier, food less reliable, experts warn
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Climate change is making temperatures deadlier, food less reliable, experts warn
- The study’s authors urged the upcoming UN climate summit, COP29, to direct climate finance toward public health
Hundreds in London protest against Beijing ‘mega embassy’
- Protesters, their faces mostly covered with scarves or masks, chanted “No to Chinese embassy“
- The latest protest came ahead of an expected decision this week
LONDON: Hundreds of people on Saturday rallied in London against Beijing’s controversial new “mega” embassy, days ahead of a decision on the plan.
Protesters, their faces mostly covered with scarves or masks, chanted “No to Chinese embassy” and waved flags reading “Free Hong Kong. Revolution now.”
Others held up placards with slogans such as “MI5 warned. Labour kneeled,” referring to the UK’s domestic intelligence agency and Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s ruling party.
Others read: “CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is watching you. Stop the mega embassy.”
China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the shadow of the Tower of London.
The move has sparked fierce opposition from nearby residents, rights groups and critics of China’s ruling Communist Party.
The latest protest came ahead of an expected decision this week.
Benedict Rogers, head of the human rights group Hong Kong Watch said if it got the go-ahead it was “highly likely” that the site “will be used for espionage,” citing the sensitive underground communications cables close to the site.
He said China had already been “carrying out a campaign of transnational repression against different diaspora communities” and other critics and predicted that that would “increase and intensify.”
Beijing ‘operations base’ -
A protester who gave his name only as Brandon, for fear of reprisals, said the plans raised a “lot of concerns.”
The 23-year-old bank employee, originally from Hong Kong but now living near Manchester in northwestern England, said many Hong Kongers had moved to the UK “to avoid authoritarian rule in China.”
But they now found there could be an embassy in London serving as an “operations base” for Beijing.
“I don’t think it’s good for anyone except the Chinese government,” he said.
Another demonstrator, who did not to give her name, called on Starmer to “step back and stop it (the plan) because there is a high risk to the national security of the UK, not only Hong Kongers.”
The 60-year-old warehouse worker, also originally from Hong Kong and now living in Manchester, said the embassy would be a “spy center not only to watch the UK but the whole of Europe.”
Speakers at the rally throwing their weight behind the campaign to stop the embassy included Kemi Badenoch, leader of the main opposition Conservative Party.
British MPs voiced major security concerns earlier this week after a leading daily reported the site would house 208 secret rooms, including a “hidden chamber.”
The Daily Telegraph said it had obtained unredacted plans for the vast new building which would stand on the historical site of the former Royal Mint.
It showed that Beijing reportedly plans to construct a single “concealed chamber” among “secret rooms” underneath the embassy which would be placed alongside the underground communications cables.
