Climate change is damaging the health of children across the globe—even those that haven’t been born yet.
According to a study published by The Lancet, a child delivered today will grow up in a world that, by its very overheated nature, threatens their well-being at every stage of life.
“Children are particularly vulnerable to the health risks of a changing climate,” Nick Watts, co-author of a report tracking the relationship between health and climate change, said in a statement.
Consequences of global average temperature rise like extreme weather conditions, food and water insecurity, and changing patterns of infectious disease are entirely out of newborns’ hands.
Yet they’re the ones who must deal with the fallout.
“The damage done in early childhood is persistent and pervasive, with health consequences lasting a lifetime,” Watts said. “Without immediate action from all countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions … climate change will come to define the health of an entire generation.”
The Lancelot Countdown on Health and Climate Change is an international analysis of progress by 120 experts from 35 institutions, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank.
This year’s report warns that, for the world to meet its UN climate goals, the energy landscape must change drastically—and soon.
“The climate crisis is one of the greatest threats to the health of humanity today, but the world has yet to see a response from governments that matches the unprecedented scale of the challenge facing the next generation,” according to Richard Horton, editor in chief of The Lancet. “The clinical, global health and research community needs to come together now and challenge our international leaders to protect the imminent threat to childhood and lifelong health.”
Achieving the Paris Agreement goal of 1.5 °C global warming is ambitious, yes. But it could also mean that a child born today could see an end to coal use by their sixth birthday, and net-zero emissions by their 31st.
“The path that the world chooses today will irreversibly mark our children’s futures,” co-author Stella Hartinger, of Cayetano Heredia University in Peru, said. “We must listen to the millions of young people who have led the wave of school strikes for urgent action.
“It will take the work of 7.5 billion people currently alive to ensure that the health of a child born today isn’t defined by a changing climate,” she added.
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