Six climate and health actions could save 1.6M lives and deliver trillions | Hacker News Reader

Six climate and health actions could save 1.6M lives and deliver trillions

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3 pointsrobtherobber4 comments

> The report estimates that scaling up the six actions globally could prevent 1.6 million deaths annually – equivalent to one in every 40 deaths, based on modelled projections. The six actions include: heat-health warning systems; climate-resilient drinking-water services; basic sanitation services; hygiene and handwashing facilities; cleaner household fuels and technologies for cooking and heating; and efficient fossil fuel pricing policies. The actions could also help avoid 16.7 billion tonnes of CO₂ emissions, equivalent to 31% of global annual greenhouse gas emissions excluding land use, land use change and forestry.

Across five of the actions, every US$ 1 invested is estimated to yield US$ 24 in benefits. <

Seems like very sensible actions. Heat-health warning system - I don't understand this. Isn't this basically just the weather forecast doing its thing?

There's really nothing to understand, it's just more climate slop. It's marketing, meant to keep an idea they are selling fresh in your head.

> Heat-health warning system - I don't understand this. Isn't this basically just the weather forecast doing its thing?

Not quite. Weather forecast is focused on, well, weather, whereas a heat-health warning system is basically an early warning when adverse temperatures are likely to impact on the health and wellbeing of the population [0]. Whilst weather forecast will tell us how warm it will likely be, heat-health warning systems will tell us of potential health impacts; their main goal is to reduce heat-related morbidity and mortality [1].

On whether it's "climate slop", as one misinformed user appears to suggest - it definitely isn't. In the UK there's an official alert dashboard for this [2] and the national weather and climate service (Met Office) has a short guide explaining how it works [3].

(With so many people denying how reality works I sometimes wonder if we shouldn't in fact let it all burn. It's beyond depressing.)

[0] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/weather-health-alerting-system

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12367936/

[2] https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/weather-health-alerts/he...

[3] https://weather.metoffice.gov.uk/warnings-and-advice/seasona...

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