UK Study Urges Gov'ts To Dump Fossil Fuels To Protect Human Health

The evidence is clear that the world is struggling with the combined health, social and economic impacts of COVID, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and a global energy crisis.

Photo Insert: Heat-related deaths have increased by two-thirds over the last 20 years.

Now, a new report from leading medical publication The Lancet shows that our reliance on fossil fuels is making the health impacts of these crises worse, Rosie Frost reported for Euronews Green.

It details how our addiction to fossil fuels is increasing the risk of heat-related deaths, food insecurity, and infectious disease. The report’s authors say governments and companies continue to prioritize fossil fuels to the detriment of people’s health. “Our report this year reveals we are at a critical juncture,” says Dr. Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown at the University College London (UCL).

Romanello adds that climate change is driving severe health impacts all over the world. Fossil fuel dependence is compounding these health harms too, amid multiple global crises.

She says it is “keeping households vulnerable to volatile fossil fuel markets, exposed to energy poverty, and dangerous levels of air pollution.” A total of 99 experts from 51 different organizations UCL, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) contributed to the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate, the Agence France-Presse (AFP), Associated Press (AP) and Reuters also reported.

Temperature records have been broken around the world this year with Europe seeing an unprecedented heatwave this summer. In 2021, almost half a trillion hours of work were also lost due to extreme heat - mostly for agriculture workers in the Global South. And this extreme weather is putting serious pressure on health services too.

The Lancet report found that heat-related deaths have increased by two-thirds over the last 20 years. “The climate crisis is killing us,” says UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

“It is undermining not just the health of our planet, but the health of people everywhere - through toxic air pollution, diminishing food security, higher risks of infectious disease outbreaks, record extreme heat, drought, floods and more.”

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