When will the climate change lobby finally realise that it is undermining its own arguments through hyperbole? Yesterday, the Lancet published its latest climate change ‘indicators’, accompanied by a comment piece in the Guardian by Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and now chair of the Lancet Countdown advisory board. The piece, headed ‘Climate change isn’t just hurting the planet – it’s a public health emergency’ makes the assertion that climate change is affecting ‘the health of you, your family, your neighbours – each and every one of us.’
If you are puzzled as to how to square this with data from the WHO which shows steady declines this century in global mortality in infection diseases, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and respiratory diseases, don’t worry – I couldn’t either. Reading the Lancet’s report didn’t provide much enlightenment.
One of the Lancet’s indicators – and which Figueres chose to quote in her Guardian piece – is the number of people exposed to heatwaves.
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