Source: Channel 4 News
URL: N/A
Date: 05/08/2017
Event: Channel 4 News asks how to avert "apocalyptic prediction"
Credit: Channel 4 News
People:
Cathy Newman: Extreme weather is one of the biggest global threats to human health, scientists have warned, declaring that without urgent action to tackle climate change, by the turn of the century up to 152,000 people in Europe could die each year, most of them because of intense heatwaves. All this as much of Europe swelters in the hottest weather for more than a decade, with temperatures hitting 44 degrees Celsius. Jane Deith reports.
Jane Deith: Cooling off in Romania [footage of a woman washing in cold water], one of eleven countries which have issued extreme heat warnings. As the mercury hit 42 degrees Celsius in Bucharest, people have been fainting or suffering heart attacks in the boiling sun. Medical tents are providing water and health checks.
Romanian woman [translated]: I can't walk home any more - I need to stay here for a couple of minutes. I feel like I'm going to faint.
Jane Deith: It hasn't been this hot in Europe since 2003. Then, 20,000 - mostly elderly - people died. Today, at Sarajevo's main hospital, young, fit people are being treated.
Dr. Tihomir Bera [translated]: Even healthy people are coming here, asking for help. They've been caught out by this extreme high temperature and humidity.
Jane Deith: Scientists at the European Commission say in about 50 years, vastly more of us could be at risk from killer weather, if we don't manage to stop global warming from greenhouse gas emissions. Weather disaster records show that from the '80s till 2010, around 3,000 people a year in Europe died from heatwaves and other extreme weather, but from 2071 to the end of the century, global warming might mean heatwaves of 50 degrees C, and we could see up to 152,000 deaths a year. That would mean two in three of us could be affected by weather disasters. Southern Europeans will see most of the heatwaves. In northern Europe, we'd be more at risk from storms and floods. The scientists say their fatal forecast makes the Paris climate agreement to slow global warming more important than ever.
Donald Trump: The United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.
Jane Deith: Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris promise. And America's just given the UN formal notice.
Mike Pence: The United States of America officially, today, notified the United Nations that we are withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord. [Applause].
Jane Deith: Of course, we've had heatwaves before, but this new worst-case scenario suggests that in future, a lolly or a paddle won't help. The risk from the weather could be of a completely different order from anything we've faced in the past.
Cathy Newman: Well, a little earlier I spoke to Paul Wilkinson, Professor of Environmental Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. I asked him what can be done to avert this apocalyptic prediction.
Paul Wilkinson: Some degree of climate change is now inevitable, and we therefore have to get used to the idea that we're going to live in a warmer world, a world of changing climate. And so, for that we have to build houses better - air-conditioning, we know, is quite effective against highest temperatures. But it means things like increasing shading, having greater cover, and also in transport systems [?] and it is something which is very important to try to reduce, as much as we can. That means we need to take much faster, accelerated action on reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases.
Cathy Newman: Is there any sign that governments around the world are grasping this problem? Or, I mean, today, you know, the US has formally pulled out of Paris, the Paris climate change agreement. So actually we're seeing the reverse, that governments, you believe, are not very likely to step up to the plate.
Paul Wilkinson: Well, it's a bit of a mixed picture. I think Paris was an optimistic note - it was a good agreement, and to take, for many nations, agreeing to take big steps. The reality is: the steps that are being taken, at the moment, are still not enough. We need to accelerate that, and collectively. And, of course, it's unfortunate that a country such as the US are now pulling back from that commitment, and losing their place of leadership on this issue. But I'm hopeful that enough nations have now realised the importance of it and that it will continue.
Cathy Newman: We're seeing some pretty eye-watering temperatures in southern Europe at the moment. How much of that, do you think, is an isolated event and how much, do you look at that and think you're starting to see a pattern of the sort that is described by this study?
Paul Wilkinson: The study has shown that those one-hundred-year frequency events will become much more frequency [sic] and effectively annual events by the end of this century, particularly in southern Europe.
Cathy Newman: Paul Wilkinson, thank you very much for joining us.
Paul Wilkinson: Not at all.