http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1211-13.htm
Published on Thursday,
December 11, 2003 by Reuters
Climate Change Death Toll Put at 150,000
by Christian Plumb
MILAN - Global warming killed 150,000 people in 2000 and
the death toll could double again in the next 30 years
if current trends are not reversed, the World Health
Organization says.
One heatwave killed
20,000 people in Europe alone this year,
the WHO said, launching a book on health-weather links at
a U.N. environment conference.
Climate change, linked
by scientists to human emissions
of gases such as carbon dioxide from cars and factories,
is causing more frequent floods and droughts and melting
ice caps.
"An estimated
150,000 deaths...were caused in the year 2000
due to climate change," the study said. A further 5.5 million
healthy years of life were lost worldwide due to debilitating
diseases caused by climate change, it said.
"The 1990s were
the hottest decade on record and the upward
trend in the world's temperature does not look like it is
abating," it said. "In Europe this past summer, for
example,
an estimated 20,000 people died due to extremely hot temperatures."
The situation will
worsen if climate trends continue, WHO experts
said at a news conference to launch the book.
"We see an approximate
doubling in deaths and in the burden
in healthy life years lost" by 2030, said WHO scientist Diarmid
Campbell-Lendrum.
DIARRHEA, MALARIA
The book estimated
climate change was to blame for 2.4 percent
of cases of diarrhea because, Campbell-Lendrum said, the heat
would exacerbate bacterial contamination of food.
Climate change was
also behind two percent of all cases of malaria,
because increased rainfall created new breeding grounds for mosquitoes
which carry the disease, he said.
But he acknowledged
global deaths from climate change were minuscule
compared with the total number of deaths a year, which the WHO
puts
at 56 million. About 10 times more people die each year from
tobacco-linked illness, he said.
"That doesn't
make it more acceptable and the fact is it's likely
to get worse," he said. "One of the points about climate
change
is that people who are affected by it don't have the choice to
stop smoking."
While halting global
warming was the only long-term cure, immediate
actions to fight disease and improve access to health services
would also help, Campbell-Lendrum said.
The 180-nation conference
in Milan is trying to work out ways
to slow climate change, mainly via the United Nations' Kyoto
protocol which aims to curb emissions of greenhouse gases.
Not all scientists
were convinced by the study, especially
by the link it draws between warming and malaria.
"It is naive to
predict the effects of 'global warming'
on malaria on the mere basis of temperature," Paul Reiter,
a professor at Paris's Pasteur Institute, said in a statement.
"Why don't we
devote our resources to tackling these diseases
directly, instead of spending billions in vain attempts to change
the weather?"
Additional reporting
by Alister Doyle
© Copyright 2003
Reuters Ltd
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