At Moms Clean Air Force, we’ve been reporting for years about the unique health impacts of climate change on children. With tiny bodies, and immune systems still developing, the susceptibility to disease and environmental pollutants is far more damaging than in adults.
Sounding this alarm, The Lancet, a medical journal focused their latest report on the effects of climate change on children’s health.
As climate conditions worsen, executive director of the The Lancet, Nick Watts asked, “Who is going to be the most vulnerable?” His answer: “Children.” Watts told reporters, “To the extent that we’re asking, well, how is it different from before to the life of a child born today? That child now is being born for the first time into a world where their health will be affected at every single stage of their life by a changing climate.”
Dr. Renee N. Salas, a Harvard Medical School instructor and lead author of the US policy brief that accompanied the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, bleakly confers: “With every degree of warming, a child born today faces a future where their health and well-being will be increasingly impacted by the realities and dangers of a warmer world.”
Here are a few key takeaways from the Lancet Report via CNBC:
- Scientists and health experts warn that children will suffer from infectious diseases, malnutrition and air pollution worsened by climate change, in a new report from The Lancet.
- A child born today will experience a world that is more than 4˚C warmer by the time they turn 71 years old, which will threaten their health at every stage of their life.
- Climate change has become a widespread concern as more frequent and extreme weather events triggered by rising temperatures occur across the globe.
- In just the past several months, a heat wave scorched Europe, wildfires tore across the Amazon rainforest, parts of California, Russia and the Arctic, and Hurricane Dorian pummeled the Bahamas.