Report: Heat Waves Now Killing One Person Every Minute Around Globe

A report in the medical journal The Lancet said that
with climate change, heat waves on average are killing
one person per minute. 

As we head into winter, we don't think about heat waves all that much, but they're still making the news. 

Mostly because of their increasing intensity and increasing risk of death associated with these events, all due to climate change. 

As Grist tells us: 

"Extreme heat now kills one person every minute, according to the report, noting that the rate of heat-related deaths has risen 23 percent since the 1990s - a trend the authors attribute in large part to planetary warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The vast majority of the heatwave days endured worldwide between 2020 and 2024 would not have occurred in the absence of climate change."

The news is from "Countdown On Health and Climate Change" which is compiled by researchers around the world and has been published yearly since 2015 in British medical journal Lancet. 

These annual reports always seem to have bad news. Grist notes that the 2020 report said that climate change threatened to undermine the past 50 years of gains in public health. This year's report said that loss has already begun, thanks in large part to the increasing heat deaths. 

But it's not just the heat. Hot weather worsens drought, which can in turn worsen forest fires. Deaths might well be increasing due to tiny particles these fires emit.

One for-instance is last January's horrible wildfires around Los Angeles. The official death toll is around 30. But, as we noted in September, studies indicate the actual death toll might have been closer to 440, based on a review of death records around the time of the fires. 

Heat waves and droughts contribute to food insecurity, which in turn can fire up political instability. Tropical diseases are spreading away from the equator, as insects that can spread them find they can increase their range as the planet warms. 

Climbing global temperatures and heat waves are also sapping productivity and the economy. 

The 2025 Lancet report puts all these factors in stark relief. The World Health Organization, citing the report, motes that 640 billion potential labor hours were lost in 2024, with productivity losses amounting to $1.09 trillion in U.S. dollars.  

Battling climate change appears to have economic benefits, according to the report. An estimated 160,000 premature deaths are now being avoided yearly because coal-powered plants have shut down. Renewable energy now accounts for 123 percent of global electricity, and that has created about 16 million jobs worldwide. 

We have a lot of statistics here, but remember, there are real people behind all those numbers. We, as a global population have to decide: Are we going to let more and more people die in a increasingly hostile climate world, or are we going to build up a cleaner, safer future and create a higher standard of living in the process?

Most of the 1% don't care whether people live or die in a climate-ravaged world. They just want to hang on to their billions. But there's far more of us than them. Let's hope, in a peaceful way, we can overwhelm that 1% and find our way to a cleaner, cooler future. 

The cynic in mean is skeptical. But you gotta hang on to hope, too.