A newborn baby hasn’t even had time to contribute –as we all do, with our consumption and eating habits and fuel use– to the emissions of polluting gases that cause global warming.
Despite this, this baby will suffer exponentially more than his grandparents with the climate changes taking place on the planet.
In practice, children born in 2020 must experience an average of seven times more extreme heat waves in their lifetime than someone born in 1960. In some countries, this increase is up to ten times.
The findings are from a recent study published in the journal Science, based on projections on the size and age of the global population, future temperatures and extreme weather events, based on information from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) .
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If, in addition to heat waves, other types of extreme weather events are placed in this account, it is estimated that the new generation will experience an average 2 to 7 times higher incidence of fires, droughts, floods, tropical storms and crop failures ( crops) over their lifetimes compared to the generation born 60 years ago.
“The younger you are, the greater the increase in exposure to extreme weather. In other words, the younger generations are the ones who have the most to lose, especially newborns”, explains the main author of the study to BBC News Brasil, climate scientist Wim Thiery, from the Vrije University of Brussels (Belgium).
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“We can also think the other way around: the younger you are, the more you can benefit if we increase our ambitions and reduce global warming”, especially if it is possible to keep warming within the limit of up to 1.5°C established in the Climate Agreement Paris in 2015, which has become an increasingly remote goal, in the eyes of many climate observers.
“For younger generations, raising ambitions has a direct effect on their lives,” concludes Thiery.
From the nearly 50°C heat in Canada’s summer to floods in Germany and longer droughts in Brazil, extreme weather events are one of the main direct consequences of climate change.
According to an important IPCC report released in August, the entire planet is already facing changes in the water cycle, which cause from heavier rains –and floods–, to more intense droughts.
“Under a global warming of 1.5°C, there will be increased heat waves, longer hot seasons and shorter cold seasons,” the UN panel explained in August.
If this increase in global temperature is even greater, at 2°C, “hot extremes will more often reach tolerance limits for agriculture and health.”
‘Unprecedented life’
If, because they have longer to live, children will be the most affected, Thiery and his colleagues say that global warming already leaves the entire global population subject to an “unprecedented life”.
“We found that all people between zero and 60 years old today will live an unprecedented life, with more heat waves and crop failures, regardless of their age or the extent of climate change,” says the scientist.
“Those under 40, moreover, will suffer from far more floods and droughts, even in the most ambitious scenario of warming up to 1.5°C. The youngest have the most to lose, but all who are alive today are under conditions that we call ‘unnavigated territory’.”
To show this more concretely, Vrije University created a calculator called My Climate Future.
In it, a person can predict the increase in weather events in their life from the year they were born, where they live, and based on three scenarios – the most optimistic, of a 1.5°C warmer planet; the median, an average of 2.4°C warmer, based on the current trajectory and the climate promises and commitments made so far; and a more pessimistic and highly hot one.
The regions of the world where the suffering will be most acute and felt by the most people, according to Thiery’s calculations, are the Middle East and North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.
But estimates for the rest of the world are far from encouraging.
In Latin America, a child born in 2020 will face, compared to someone born in 1960:
– 50% more likely to suffer from fires
– Two and a half times more likely to live under crop failures
– Double droughts and floods
– 4.5 times more hot flashes
“And we have scientific reasons to believe the numbers are underestimated. Because we only look at changes in frequency in extreme events, but they also change in intensity (like more intense hurricanes) and in duration (like longer, hotter heat waves) “, continues Wim Thiery.
climate injustices
The effects of this are felt in a chain: heat waves damage health, leaving children and the elderly, in particular, more subject to hospitalization. Crop failures affect the price and supply of food. Floods, floods and droughts intensify global migratory movements.
And again, the younger and poorer the people affected, the greater their burden.
“Although we did not quantify this in our study, there is no doubt that this increase in exposure to climate change has consequences, for example, in the ability to learn, in health, in mortality and in labor productivity”, points out Thiery.
“That’s why we say that limiting global warming is a matter of protecting the future of younger generations.”
The findings of the scientist and his colleagues helped to support a report by the NGO Save the Children on the unequal and unfair burden of climate change on those who contributed least to the crisis.
“When ranked by income, the richest 50% countries account for 86% of the cumulative global CO2 emissions2, while the poorest half accounts for only 14%”, says the NGO.
“Nevertheless, it is children from low- and middle-income countries who will face the greatest burden of loss and damage to health and human capital, land, cultural heritage, indigenous and local knowledge, and biodiversity that result from the changes. climate. (…) They inherited a problem that was not caused by them.”
Thiery uses more numbers to highlight this unequal weight, first on children and, second, on poor children, in regions that are still undergoing population growth.
“In Europe and Central Asia, 64 million children were born between 2015 and 2020. These children will face four times more extreme weather under current conditions than someone living in a world without climate change,” he says.
“However, in that same period from 2015 to 2020, 205 million children were born in sub-Saharan Africa, who will face six times the extremes of weather. So they will not only suffer more, they are also a larger group.”
Therefore, argues the scientist, mitigating the effects of climate change is a matter of “intergenerational and international justice”.
The most recent climate conference (COP26) in Glasgow concluded on November 13th with advances and limitations.
On the one hand, the final agreement of the event talks about cutting CO emissions2 by 45% by 2030 compared to 2010 and requires countries to present new commitments to reduce greenhouse gases as early as next year.
However, there was no consensus around ending the use of coal and fossil fuel subsidies, one of the main “villains” of global warming.
In general, the perception of environmentalists is that the commitments made so far by countries seem to be insufficient to ensure that the Earth will not warm by more than 1.5°C.
It is not by chance, argues Thiery, that the makers of these commitments are older people, who will not have time to feel most of the climate effects of the future under their skin.
“That’s why the younger people became organizers of protests and strikes calling for more ambitious climate policies – because the people who currently occupy the spaces of power should not feel the consequences of their decisions, generating a potential intergenerational conflict”, he says.
He recalls that there is already an international wave of climate-related lawsuits being filed against governments from around the world – many of these lawsuits filed by young people who feel their human rights have been hurt by climate policies.
In general, says the scientist, the perception that climate change is a problem in the distant future has changed, which will harm abstract, unborn people.
“The data show that it is (a problem that) is here, now, affecting all the people of the world: all generations living today, in all countries, especially the younger ones, will suffer the negative consequences”, he adds, in conclusion :
“The outlook is bleak, but there is also a clear message that if we reduce climate change, we will reduce this escalation of weather extremes and protect the future of real people who are already alive.”
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