Alarming numbers
A new study has shown that by 2050, climate change could lead to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths.
By examining World Health Organization (WHO) data from 2000 to 2022, a research team from the Catholic University of Argentina looked at how rising temperatures impact physical activity.
The findings were published in The Lancet Global Health and are part of a growing body of work on the less obvious impacts of global warming.
Researchers predicted that physical inactivity will decrease by 1.4%, for every additional month with average temperatures above 27.8°C.
This will drop by 1.85% in low and middle-income countries, as by 2050 hot spot countries close to the Equator could show inactivity of 4%.
As high temperatures mean they’re less active, the bad news is that between 470,000 and 700,000 people worldwide could die within the next 24 years.
And the research’s figures are an understatement, according to Jim NR Dale, founder of the British Weather Services and extreme weather writer.
Dale, who was not involved in the research, told Metro that “I think the number could actually be quite a lot higher, depending on the speed of climate change and the temperature profile from country to country”.
Without greater action, the world is on track to warm by between 2.7 and 3.1°C by 2100.
While Dale admits that this might not sound like a lot, he adds that “neither does a drop of arsenic in your coffee, but it will kill you”.
Meanwhile, climate change campaigner and author, Matthew Todd, says that “scientists also warn 2027 may break 2024’s record to become the hottest year ever recorded by humanity”.
“We too have just endured months of rain – we know UK winters are getting wetter – so climate change is not just affecting our physical health, it’s also affecting our mental health. This is not a future problem. It’s happening now, and it’s speeding up.”
In 2023, a group of experts convened by the UN, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warned that within the next few years, our planet is likely to cross a critical threshold for global warming.
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