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Pandemic Economic Recovery Could Worsen Climate Change Health Impacts
By continuing to subsidize fossil fuels, recovery plans could exacerbate threats from diseases like malaria, cholera and dengue fever

Pandemic recovery plans that invest in or subsidize fossil fuels will increase the spread of infectious diseases globally by contributing to climate change, according to a new report from The Lancet, a leading medical journal.

Increased infections of dengue fever, cholera and malaria are just some of the ways, along with more severe heat waves and wildfires, that failure to act on climate change will have catastrophic health impacts around the world and in the United States, according to “The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change,” which has 93 authors across 43 academic institutions and United Nations agencies.

“This report is a code-red for our healthy future,” said co-author Anthony Costello, a professor of global health and sustainable development at the University College London.

The report, released last night, takes particular aim at policy missteps—such as coronavirus economic recovery plans—that could worsen climate health impacts.

“A fossil-fuel driven recovery, although potentially meeting narrow and near-term economic targets, could push the world irrevocably off course for the ambitions of the Paris Agreement, with enormous costs to human health,” the report states.

The report notes that just 18 percent of post-pandemic economic recovery funds are expected to lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and that economic recovery from COVID-19 already has led to a 5 percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions in 2021.

What’s more, 77 percent of countries reviewed in the report are still subsidizing fossil fuel development, with some of those subsidies “accounting for many times their whole health budget,” said Marina Romanello, a “Countdown” author from the University of Cambridge.

“Current COVID-19 recovery plans are threatening to lock the world into a future of increased emissions and ill-health,” she said. “As trillions of dollars are being unrolled for COVID recovery, we are really risking that those dollars are assigned to high-carbon intensity activities and a carbonized recovery.”

The report’s release comes just weeks before world leaders will meet in Glasgow, Scotland, for COP26 talks, where scientists say nations must agree to sharp declines in fossil fuel usage in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Costello said he hoped the report will serve as “a wake-up call” before that meeting.

“We are calling for urgent, globally coordinated action to mitigate climate change and to integrate climate change mitigation into COVID-19 recovery plans,” he said. “Global leaders will have the opportunity at COP26 to really move things and tackle the climate and health crises, and all countries must commit to more ambitious climate plans that include health equity.”

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