‘A Devastating Global Audit’ Shows How Climate Change Is Undermining the Health of Millions

As world leaders prepare to meet for the 30th annual United Nations climate change conference, or COP30, in northern Brazil later this month, a new report has found that climate change is already killing millions of people every year. The “Countdown on Health and Climate Change,” which is compiled by researchers around the world, has been published every year since 2015 by the British medical journal The Lancet.

The missives have grown increasingly dire over that decade. In 2020, the report warned that climate change threatened to “undermine the past 50 years of gains in public health.” Five years later, the same document suggests that this erosion is well underway.