150 scientists demand climate change be declared a global health emergency

The planet's fever is now a full-blown health crisis — and the people who study it are done waiting. Nearly 150 researchers from more than 30 countries are pushing for climate change to be formally declared a "global health emergency," per DW. Their evidence lands in the annual Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, and it is grim. Climate change drove more than half a million heat deaths in 2023 alone — and nearly 3 million since 2016.

Heat is the sharpest blade. Climate change was behind 68% of heat-related deaths between 2016 and 2023, up from 55% in the decade before the Paris accord. The yearly increase in those deaths more than doubled over the same stretch. Deaths are only "the tip of the iceberg," said Ollie Jay of the University of Sydney's Heat and Health Research Center — "except that iceberg is not melting, it's growing every year." Below the waterline sit heatstroke, wrecked sleep and worsening chronic illness.

The money is hemorrhaging too. Heat wiped out 573 billion potential working hours in 2025, with farmworkers hit hardest. Vulnerable economies in Africa and South-East Asia lost as much as 5% of GDP, against 0.5% in richer nations — and heat cost the world an estimated $1.07 trillion in lost potential income last year. "The economic toll is battering vulnerable sectors and communities the hardest," said Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown.

Water is swinging to extremes. Satellite data since 2003 show 43% of the world's land steadily drying out while 37% gets wetter — more than 80% of land shifting toward conditions that threaten crops, food supplies and sanitation. Drought strips communities of safe drinking water and invites disease; floods bring drowning, injury and contamination. In 2024, heat waves and droughts pushed nearly 128 million more people into food insecurity compared with the 1981–2010 average. "This isn't a gradual worsening; it's a step change," Romanello said.

So the researchers want a new tool: a WHO instrument, created by the UN and its member states, to help countries share information, coordinate responses, monitor threats and move money. The closest thing today is the Public Health Emergency of International Concern mechanism used for COVID-19 and mpox — but Romanello said it was built for short, sharp emergencies and can't handle a threat needing decades of cross-sector work. The goal, she said, is to stop "responding to emergency after emergency" and build lasting resilience instead.

There is progress, just not enough. Renewable growth helped cut deaths from fossil fuel air pollution in half of 140 countries assessed since 2016, preventing an estimated 323,000 deaths a year, and 56 countries now have climate-adaptation plans for their health services, up from 14 in 2015. But fossil fuels still supply over 80% of world energy, energy emissions hit a record high in 2024, and the 100 largest oil and gas companies are on track to produce 150% more by 2040 than a 1.5 C limit allows. Fossil fuel subsidies have doubled since 2016, now at $6.2 trillion, and developing nations get only about a third of the $3.3 billion a year they say they need for health adaptation. As Helen Clark, chair of the Lancet Countdown's board, put it: "What's missing is not evidence, but the political will to act on it."