2 publishers · first seen Wed, 28 Oct 2026 07:17 UTC · updated Thu, 29 Oct 2026 08:55 UTC
Climate change should be declared a global health emergency, according to more than 140 experts from over 30 countries, who found that health harms from climate change are outpacing global response efforts. In 2023, heat was linked to a record 710,000 deaths, with more than 70% of those deaths attributable to human-caused climate change. The findings, published by the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change ahead of the UN climate summit Cop31, show that annual average heat-related deaths rose by nearly 36% globally after the 2015 Paris Agreement compared to the previous decade.
Extreme drought affected nearly 52% of the world's land for at least one month in 2025, the second-highest level on record, while 80% of global land has seen shifting patterns in groundwater storage since 2003, impacting food security and sanitation. Despite clean energy investment nearly doubling fossil fuel investment in 2025 and preventing an estimated 323,000 deaths annually in at least 77 countries, fossil fuels still supply more than 80% of the world's energy.
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