Mainland Europe is in the midst of a torturous heatwave right now, with “red” weather warnings issued for as many as 10 countries.
A study published in the Lancet Planetary Health journal has said that this state of affairs could become significantly more lethal by the end of the century if greenhouse gas emissions are not curtailed.
While European weather-related deaths between 1981 and 2010 stood at roughly 3,000 a year, the study projects an exponential increase for the final three decades of the 21st century.
The study projects no fewer than 152,000 weather-related deaths a year between 2071 and 2100 if nothing is done to scale back our impact on the climate. This would represent a 50-fold increase on the thirty years between 1981 and 2010.
The study also argues that 2-in-3 Europeans would be impacted by a weather disaster in some way, as opposed to the 5% who were exposed to such catastrophe from 1981 onward.
The journal argues that most of these additional deaths would be caused by heatwaves.
