Biggest global health threat of 21st century: climate change
A newly released report identifies climate change as the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.
If nothing is done, global warming could affect the health of billions of people throughout the world, with the poor suffering most, according to the report from the University College London and The Lancet.
Deaths from heat waves, malaria, and other vector-borne diseases (diseases transmitted by sources such as mosquitoes or ticks) are projected to rise as global temperatures increase. But the report identifies food and water shortages and increasingly violent weather events as the biggest climate-change-related threats to human health.
Pediatrician Anthony Costello, MD, who chaired the commission that issued the report, says there is new evidence that climate change is occurring faster than many experts had anticipated.
He tells WebMD that recent findings on greenhouse gas emissions, global temperature changes, sea level rise, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events suggest that climate forecasts made in 2007 by an international panel evaluating climate change may be optimistic.
"The forecasts made by the world climate scientists a few years ago are starting to look too conservative," he says.
Costello points out that since records began to be kept a century and a half ago, 12 of the warmest years on record have occurred within the last 13 years.
He adds that the health effects of climate change are already being seen and will increasingly be felt as temperatures rise.
According to the report: …
