Air conditioners may help prevent heatwaves from causing accelerated ageing Sajjad HUSSAIN/AFP via Getty Images Sweltering heatwaves can have lasting health impacts – accumulated exposure to hot-weather days appears to accelerate people’s biological ageing. “We now have at least two prominent studies showing an impact of heatwave exposure on ageing, with these examining populations from … Read more
If you’re like a lot of people, you’re finding it harder and harder to stomach climate change—literally. A warming world leads to all manner of health problems, including increased risk of cardiovascular diseaseexacerbation of pulmonary conditions like asthma and COPD, and mental health problems including depression and anxiety. Increasingly, however, climate change is being implicated … Read more
We all have cause to take climate change personally. Not only do higher temperatures lead to such mega-events as droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and floods, they also affect human health—exacerbating asthma, allergiescardiovascular disease, the spread of water-borne pathogens, and more. Now, it appears that a warming world affects us in one other, potentially life-threatening way. … Read more
As the number of extreme heat days continues to rise due to climate change, the high temperatures are taking a toll on our health—extreme heat has been linked to a range of health issues, including heatstroke, dehydration, and respiratory problems. But some people are at greater risk than others: warmer days are putting pregnant people … Read more
More and more, climate change is taking a toll not only on communities, the environment, and the economy, but also on human minds. In recent years, researchers have been describing what they variously label eco-distress, exo-anxietyor even eco-grief—a suite of symptoms including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder—linked to experiencing severe weather events or simply … Read more
Climate change is bad news for a lot of reasons—the droughts, the floods, the heat, the hurricanes. And then, too, there’s all the sneezing. If you suffer from hay fever—or allergic rhinitis (AR)—and have found your symptoms growing worse in recent years, you’re not alone. Increasingly, health care professionals are concluding that as global heat … Read more
Canadian freestyle skier Philippe Marquis has always felt most at home in the mountains, his playground a postcard of snow-capped beauty. But the two-time Olympian has watched the place he loves most change over his time in the sport, all because of a warming climate. Less than a decade ago, he would train into the … Read more
North Milford Valley, in western Utah, is home to dormant volcanoes, subterranean lava deposits, and smatterings of obsidian—black volcanic glass—that Paiute peoples once collected for arrowheads and jewelry. Scalding groundwater still bubbles to the surface in places. In such a landscape, you remember that the planet’s hard exterior, where we spend our entire lives, is … Read more
Stockholm, Sweden – Sweden’s Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that Greta Thunberg and hundreds of other activists cannot proceed with a lawsuit that had sought to force the state to take stronger action against climate change. Activists filed a class action lawsuit in 2022 with a district court, arguing that the state violates rights set out in … Read more
When Donald Trump was inaugurated for the first time, in January, 2017, Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law launched the Climate Deregulation Tracker. Four years and a hundred and seventy-six entries later, when Joe Biden took office, the tool was renamed the Climate Reregulation Tracker. Last month, the tool was renamed again: it’s … Read more
