Part Three / How it Affects Us

3.2 Health and Climate

All online sources accessed on

  1. The risk of vector-borne diseases and mass hunger crises World Health Organization, COP26 Special Report on Climate Change and Health: The Health Argument for Climate Action, 11 October 2021, COP26 special report on climate change and health: the health argument for climate action (who.int).

    A study by the World Health Organization World Health Organization, Quantitative Risk Assessment of the Effects of Climate Change on Selected Causes of Death, 2030s and 2050s, 18 September 2014, https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241507691.

    children born after the year 2014 Thiery, W., et al., ‘Intergenerational inequities in exposure to climate extremes’, Science, 2021; 374 (6564), 2021: 158–60, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abi7339.

    the impacts are disproportionately felt by the most disadvantaged Action for Global Health, Health Inequalities and Climate Change: Action for Global Health Position Paper, September 2021, https://actionforglobalhealth.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Health-Inequalities-and-Climate-Change-Action-for-Global-Health-Position-Paper.pdf.

  2. health shocks and stresses already push around 100 million people into poverty every year United Nations Human Rights Council, Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights: Climate Change and Poverty, 16 July 2019, https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc4139-climate-change-extreme-poverty-and-human-rights-report

    the breaching of dangerous temperature thresholds Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ‘Summary for policymakers’, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. V. Masson-Delmotte et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press), https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/.

    a recent survey WHO conducted with its member states World Health Organization, 2021 WHO Health and Climate Change Global Survey Report, 8 November 2021, https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240038509

    more nutritious plant-based diets could reduce global emissions Springmann, M., et al., ‘Analysis and valuation of the health and climate change cobenefits of dietary change’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113 (15), 2016: 4146–51, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1523119113.

    climate action aligned with the Paris Agreement targets would save millions of lives Hamilton, I., et al., ‘The public health implications of the Paris Agreement: a modelling study’, Lancet Planetary Health, 5 (2), 2021: e74–e83, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30249-7.

  3. fossil fuel industries are still receiving subsidies of $11 million Parry, I. W. H., et al., Still Not Getting Energy Prices Right: A Global and Country Update of Fossil Fuel Subsidies, International Monetary Fund working paper, 24 September 2021, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Still-Not-Getting-Energy-Prices-Right-A-Global-and-Country-Update-of-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-466004.