London, 25 October 2022:- Responding to the launch of the 2022 Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change report, Dr Jeni Miller, Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, said:
“This year’s Lancet Countdown makes clear that fossil fuels are incompatible with a healthy future. To prevent catastrophic global warming and the ensuing devastation that will be wreaked upon people around the world, governments must commit to fully phasing out fossil fuels at COP27, while high income countries must provide developing countries with the necessary financial and technical support for providing equitable access to the clean energy their people need.”
“The Lancet Countdown report underlines how our global addiction to fossil fuels and the resulting climate crisis are compounding and aggravating not only the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic, but also current global economic challenges. Fossil fuel-driven climate change is reducing family incomes due to heat waves that impact worker productivity, is aggravating food insecurity through diminished crop yields, and is harming the hospitals and other healthcare facilities that are the first lines of defense for pandemics and other health issues. And the worst impacts of fossil fuel-driven climate change are being felt by developing countries – those least responsible for having caused it.”
“The report also finds that, in the clean energy transition, low income countries are once again being left behind, while fossil fuel companies exploit the current situation to make record profits. At a time when 99% of the world’s population breathes air that fails to meet WHO guidelines, and despite lip service about green goals, the plans of fossil fuel companies, according to Lancet Countdown, would mean production exceeding levels consistent with limiting global average surface temperature rise to 1.5 Celsius by 37% in 2030, and and 103% in 2040, risking locking the world into a dangerously warmer future” [1,2].
“The report leaves no room for doubt about the changes needed by governments and in the private sector, and the consequences for people’s health, and for the global economy, if governments fail to make this transition”, concluded Miller.
The 2022 Global Report of the Lancet Countdown
https://www.lancetcountdown.org/2022-report/
Launch event for the 2022 Report of the Lancet Countdown, 1400 UK time 26 October
https://www.lancetcountdown.org/event/2022-launch-registration/
ENDS
Notes:
[1] 4 April 2022: Billions of people still breathe unhealthy air: new WHO data
https://www.who.int/news/item/04-04-2022-billions-of-people-still-breathe-unhealthy-air-new-who-data
[2] Lancet Countdown 2022
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(22)00197-9/fulltext
Contact:
Dave Walsh, Communications Advisor, Global Climate and Health Alliance, +34 691 826 764 (Europe) – [email protected] is checked regularly.
About GCHA
The Global Climate and Health Alliance is the leading global convenor of health professional and health civil society organizations addressing climate change. We are a consortium of health organizations from around the world united by a shared vision of an equitable, sustainable future, in which the health impacts of climate change are minimized, and the health co-benefits of climate change mitigation are maximised.
Find out more: https://climateandhealthalliance.org/about/