Heat-related deaths have increased by 117% in the US since 1999 – report
GuardianSEP 3 2024
According to the 2024 Lancet Countdown report, the average person last year experienced 50 more days of dangerously high temperatures, leading to increased rates of infectious diseases, droughts, food insecurity, and deaths.
Among the impacts on humans were a 167% increased mortality rate for people aged 65 and older compared to the 1990s, increased heat stress hours by 27.7%, decreased sleep hours by 6%, and deteriorated mental health.
There was increased extreme rain in 61% of land areas, while 48% experienced at least one month of extreme drought; and just shy of 182M hectares of forests were lost from 2016-2022. While rainfall prompted flooding and disease, droughts caused an additional 151M people to face food insecurity in 2022.
Global warming is the foundation of every rise in climate-related disasters, from hurricanes to tornadoes to floods. What's scariest of all is how heat in and of itself is killing more people than those other events combined, as humans simply cannot bear the rapid temperature jumps every year. Unfortunately, continual record-breaking heat waves have become the norm for this generation, but we can still protect the future if we lower carbon emissions.
While global temperatures have steadily risen over the last 50 years, there's actually been no exponenialexponential increase in the rate of warming. AndCarbon whileemissions, you may not read this in the newstoo, carbon emissions have also remained flat or declined over hethe last decade. FromThe energy industry is already on a carbon-reducing path, from fracking and nuclear energy to solar panels and windmills. This, alongside disaster prevention policies like forest management and urban engineering, is what we need—not destroying industries or economies.