“We don’t see these health impacts individually,” said Kristie L. Ebi, a professor of global health at the University of Washington and one of the authors of the Lancet study. “We see them jointly. We see them coming at communities all at the same time.”
Among the biggest threats humans face in a warming climate is heat stress, which not only kills people directly but can also lead to kidney and cardiovascular disease, the report noted. Higher temperatures can also diminish people’s ability to work, particularly in agriculture, leading to tens of billions of hours of lost labor capacity each year.
Most worrying, according to the authors, is the compounding effect of extreme weather events that are exacerbated by climate change. Heat waves, floods and storms can batter the very public health systems that are meant to help people, the report says. A failure to rein in emissions, it warns, could lead to disasters that “disrupt core public health infrastructure and overwhelm health services.”
|  | Study Warns of Cascading Health Risks From the Changing ClimateGlobal warming is posing immediate health hazards around the world and in the United States, from kidney disease... |
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