Climate change is already making us sick

The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change report warns that “the symptoms of climate change have been clear for a number of years, with the health impacts far worse than previously understood.” These include increasing illness, injury and death from more frequent and intense heat, storms, floods, drought and wildfires, as well as the health fallout from crop damage and food insecurity, air pollution, water contamination, mass displacement and migration, and changing patterns of infectious diseases from animals and insects.

The diagnosis is grim, the symptoms are worsening and no one is immune, says Dr. Courtney Howard, lead author of an accompanying Canadian policy brief. Global temperatures are set to rise up to 4.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, a level which would be disastrous beyond our ability to adapt. “This is about our survival, flat out, our survival to 2100 and beyond,” Howard says.