"Climate change-induced shocks are claiming lives, damaging health and disrupting livelihoods in all parts of the world right now."
Global Impact
Climate change is now impacting people's health and wellbeing in every part of the world.
That's the conclusion of the 2020 Lancet Countdown report, published Monday in cooperation with the renowned Lancet medical journals. The report began in 2015 as an international group of experts tracking climate change and its impact on public health — and now, five years later, the report concludes that climate change's impacts on humanity are the most "worrying" they've ever been.
In particular, the report highlights extreme heat, food and water scarcity, and rampant infectious disease that its authors argue are linked to climate change.
Report Card
The annual Lancet Countdown tracks climate change's impact on public health across 16 metrics, including exposure to dangerously high temperatures, extreme weather events, or wildfires like those that ravaged the U.S. and Australia earlier this year. All 16 problem areas are on the rise and are the worst they've been the group started keeping track.
"Climate change-induced shocks are claiming lives, damaging health and disrupting livelihoods in all parts of the world right now," Lancet Countdown director Ian Hamilton from University College London told New Scientist. "That means no continent or community remains untouched."
Overlooked Issues
Hamilton told New Scientist that United Nations member countries tend to not factor in public health when they submit their climate action plans, so the report's authors have urged them to reconsider their approach ahead of next year's COP26 climate summit.
"At the moment health is not featuring among the [Nationally Determined Contributions] in the way that it needs to," Hamilton said.
READ MORE: Health impacts of climate change have reached 'worrying' levels [New Scientist]
More on climate change: Scientists: Climate Change Will Get so hot Your Organs Shut Down
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