Climate Change and Human Health

The climate crisis is also an urgent and ongoing health crisis with diverse human impacts leading to physical, mental and cultural losses. Translating knowledge into action involves broad collaboration, which relies heavily on careful communication of a personal and politicized issue.

Climate change can have profound impacts on mental health, yet few therapists receive training on how to talk to their clients about this issue. This Comment explores strategies for therapists to best support clients in climate distress.

Last December saw the inaugural Health Day at a Climate Conference of the Parties (COP) and the announcement of the COP28 UAE Declaration on Climate and Health, marking a substantial step in global recognition of the intersecting crises of climate change and health. Nature Climate Change speaks to Maria Neira, director of the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health at the World Health Organization, about successes and next steps.

Scientists and health professionals acknowledge that climate change is also a health emergency, but responses have been slow. Now, citizens and experts are turning to the courts as a path towards accountability, action and adaptation.

Climate change is a health emergency, impacting multiple facets of human well-being via direct and indirect pathways. Nature Climate Change asked experts from different health fields to share their thoughts on the urgent issues and possible paths forward.

As deaths attributable to climate change increase, there has been a call from some scientists for the inclusion of climate-related data on death certificates. However, others argue that there are more important methods to reduce the impacts of climate extremes on people.

Despite the trajectory towards climate catastrophe, governments are failing to take disability-inclusive climate action. We discuss how the scientific community could advance and hasten the development of disability-inclusive climate resilience, and which areas should be prioritized.

Climate anxiety, reflecting concerns about the negative impacts of climate change, is growing. Planning and action on individual specific climate risks could be a way to reduce personal climate anxiety.

The authors perform a meta-analysis to assess current and future capacities of healthcare systems under climate change. They summarize the key focus points of current literature and highlight the need for effective policies, trained workforces and redesigned infrastructure to meet future burdens.

A systematic review shows that >58% of infectious diseases confronted by humanity, via 1,006 unique pathways, have at some point been affected by climatic hazards sensitive to GHGs. These results highlight the mounting challenge for adaption and the urgent need to reduce GHG emissions.

In a prospective cohort of Chinese participants aged 65 years and older, heatwaves doubled the risk of mortality, especially in adults with functional impairments and dependency on daily living activities.

Heat extremes threaten the health of urban residents with particularly strong impacts from day–night sustained heat. Observation and simulation data across eastern China show increasing risks of compound events attributed to anthropogenic emissions and urbanization.

Climate mitigation policies often provide health co-benefits. Analysis of individual power plants under future climate–energy policy scenarios shows reducing air pollution-related deaths does not automatically align with emission reduction policies and that policy design needs to consider public health.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, managing ecosystem health, and preventing biological invasions and biodiversity loss could help to reduce the burden of plant, animal and human diseases, especially when coupled with improvements to social and economic determinants of health.

An ecological analysis of 326 cities in 9 countries across Latin America found that changes in ambient temperature have a substantial contribution to all-cause mortality, with small increases in extreme heat associated with steep increases in mortality risk.

An increasingly warm climate can lead to more intense, frequent and longer periods of hazardous heat, increasing the risk of heat-related health concerns. This study assesses whether incarcerated people in the United States are potentially disproportionately exposed to such hazardous heat conditions.

More efficient and targeted climate mitigation policies require an improved understanding of how the associated air quality and health benefits will be distributed. This study assesses, at the country level, the health effects of a global carbon price under different future scenarios.

In this article, the authors use survey data from youth in three countries from the Caribbean to provide an evidence-based model of the association of climate distress and generalized anxiety and well-being more broadly.

Elevated atmospheric CO₂ (550 ppm) could cause an additional 175 million people to be zinc deficient and 122 million protein deficient (assuming 2050 population and CO₂ projections) due to the reduced nutritional value of staple food crops.

Sustainable mariculture could increase seafood production under almost all climate-change scenarios analysed, but this would require substantial fisheries reforms, continued advances in feed technology and the establishment of effective mariculture governance and best practices.

Changes in climate and land use will lead to species aggregating in new combinations at high elevations, in biodiversity hotspots and in areas of high human population density in Asia and Africa, driving the cross-species transmission of animal-associated viruses.

The interaction between aerosol and meteorology amplifies the positive effects on air quality, health and renewable energy under China’s carbon neutrality target for 2060, according to an integrated modelling analysis.

This ecological analysis using the Eurostat database estimated that summer 2022, the hottest summer on record, was associated with over 61,000 heat-related deaths across 35 countries in Europe, with the highest mortality rates in countries near the Mediterranean Sea.

Effective solutions for food systems transformation must be designed in a participatory way. This study illustrates the application of an integrated assessment framework to explore stakeholder-driven scenarios towards climate-smart nutrition security in Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia.

Burrows, Denckla and colleagues performed a systematic review to evaluate the available evidence linking climate change to mental health outcomes.

The authors use fisheries databases and predictive models to understand past and future changes in the availability of iron, calcium omega-3 and protein from seafood. They show disproportional loss of nutrients in tropical low-income countries, which will be exacerbated by higher levels of global warming.

Analysis of 42 severe weather disasters (floods, storms and cyclones) in the United States between 2011 and 2016 reported associations with increased emergency department utilization and mortality in affected counties for up to 6 weeks.

Global change, including climate change, urbanization and global travel and trade, has affected the emergence and spread of infectious diseases. In the Review, Baker, Metcalf and colleagues examine how global change affects infectious diseases, highlighting examples ranging from COVID-19 to Zika virus disease.

This Review by Neil Adger and colleagues examines the multiple dimensions of human well-being that are affected by climate change. The authors propose policy and research priorities that are oriented towards supporting well-being.

This Review outlines three ‘grand challenges’ to protect and promote health in the face of climate change, and discusses the role of the health community in driving change within and beyond the health sector.

The relationship between climate change and health outcomes is complex. In this Review, Rajagopalan and colleagues describe the environmental exposures associated with climate change and provide an overview of the consequences of climate change, including air pollution and extreme temperatures, on cardiovascular health and disease.

Health care contributes to the climate change burden, and measures should be taken to mitigate these effects. This Perspective discusses the carbon footprint of surgery in gastroenterology and hepatology and offers an overview of sustainable strategies.

Children and adolescents may be the age cohort most vulnerable to climate anxiety. This Review uses a social–ecological theoretical framework to outline how they are uniquely susceptible to climate anxiety and identify potential protective factors.

Health is on the agenda at the COP28 climate meeting. Rising temperatures increase the spread of infectious diseases, claim lives and drive food insecurity.

Research on the effects of climate change on health will be key in high-profile lawsuits being heard by Europe’s human-rights court.

Researchers are studying how extreme weather and rising temperatures can encourage the spread of drug-resistant infections.

In this Q&A, we speak to Melissa Marselle, a member of the British Psychological Society’s Climate Environment Action Coordinating Group, which supports and advises on the implementation of effective climate change and environment work rooted in psychological evidence, and a lecturer of environmental psychology at the University of Surrey, UK. Her research examines the mental health benefits of contact with nature, with a specific focus on biodiversity.

The warming planet is worsening mental illness and distress. Researchers need to work out the scale of the problem and how those who need assistance can be helped.

Researchers want to unpick how climate change affects mental health around the world — from lives that are disrupted by catastrophic weather to people who are anxious about the future.

Health impacts from climate change have been apparent for at least 20 years, but the climate crisis is still not treated like other global public health emergencies.

Planetary and human health are inseparably connected; yet, health-care systems produce considerable amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, waste and pollution. A growing movement to measure and mitigate the health sector’s own climate damage is underway, supported by national policies and clinical innovation.

The cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the health impacts of climate change must be better understood in order to plan interventions that mitigate harm.

The spread of vector-borne infectious diseases is driven by a complex array of environmental and social drivers, including climate and land-use changes. Global and regional action is urgently needed to tackle carbon emissions and deforestation to halt future outbreaks.

People with kidney disease are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of natural disasters and extreme weather events. As climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of these events, a robust response is needed to improve disaster preparedness and increase the resilience of these patients.

Climate change and ecological emergencies threaten life on Earth. This creates a distress that is in danger of being pathologized and dismissed. We examine how such feelings are rational and underpinned by instinctive compassion for the environment and each other. We must respond by supporting people to act with their full potential, amidst systemic and government failures.

Climate change has multiple negative effects on global public health; reduced quality and quantity of crops result in increased food and financial insecurities leading to malnutrition (undernutrition and obesity) and diet-related non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases. In addition, food systems substantially contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and a shift towards sustainability is required to preserve human and planetary health.

The unprecedented extent of highly pathogenic avian influenza coincides with intensifying global climate changes that alter host ecology and physiology, and could impact virus evolution and dynamics.

Increased heat tolerance in fungi with pathogenic potential due to global warming could bring new fungal diseases.