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Last year, more than 150 million vulnerable people around the world were exposed to life-threatening heatwaves, scientists said Thursday, warning that climate change poses an unprecedented risk to health. of the planet.
In a global inventory of public health trends, dozens of international agencies said people over 65, city-dwellers in large cities and people with heart and lung diseases were all exposed to increased risk of death or disability due to extreme heat.
The warning came as the United Nations meteorological body had declared that the last four years, including 2018, had been the hottest ever recorded.
In total, 153 billion hours of work were lost due to heat exposure in 2017, including 7% of total labor time in India, said the authors. , adding that the cost of protecting people from heatwaves would probably increase as our planet warms up. .
The outlook is particularly challenging for Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, where rising temperatures and the aging of the population have caused a "perfect storm" of risk factors, according to the author principal of the study.
"For a very, very long time, we thought of climate change as an effect on the environment in 2100," said Nick Watts, executive director of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change.
"When you consider climate change as a public health problem, it really turns your head around, not just polar bears or rainforests, but also communities, children, families in the UK, in Europe and in the world. "
Agriculture in difficulty
The study team included experts from 27 institutions around the world, who mapped various climate and health trends.
Watts and his team found that while global temperatures had risen 0.3 ° C since the mid-1980s, the average temperature rise for those most exposed to heat was more than double. – 0.8 ° C.
This has been attributed to a mix of factors, including migration to cities – vulnerable to heat waves due to the "urban heat island effect", as well as to more localized heat. extreme, while climate change is having devastating effects on our weather systems.
"If you only look at the heat, you can see what the heat waves are doing," said Watts.
"If you do what we publish, you end up finding that people are aging, migrating and growing in the areas most affected by climate change."
About 80% of all hours of work lost under the extreme heat effect were in agriculture, with India being the most affected in terms of the total number of hours lost.
Scientists in July said climate change is making heat waves about twice as likely to emerge by 2040.
By using their varied health and climate Lancet The study authors said they detected 18 million more at-risk people exposed to dangerous heat levels in just two years.
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A few days before officials meet in Poland for talks to finalize the goals of the Paris climate agreement, the authors said governments were failing their population by underfunding infrastructure. basic health to protect against the weather.
According to them, health spending to adapt to climate change has increased by 3.1% to 11.68 billion pounds sterling ($ 14.9 billion, 13.2 billion euros) at worldwide, which is well below the commitments made in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
"When you go through the heating plans of many governments, they are planning heating as it has always been," Watts said.
"Unless governments prepare plans that reflect the fact that we will see many more, these plans will be out of date."
Explore further:
The proportion of the population vulnerable to heat exposure increases worldwide
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