Children, younger generations may face the worst of climate disasters: Study

A study released on Sunday looked at the effect of climate change on different generations and found that a 2021 born child will go through “seven times as many heat waves, twice as many wildfires and nearly three times as many droughts, crop failures and river floods as their grandparents” on average. 

It was further found that global warming would affect the lives of children and young people disproportionately, especially as far as climate change induced events are concerned.  The research is the first to extensively model extreme events and future climate scenarios and to apply the projections across demographic groups to quantify how people in different age groups around the world will experience climate disasters across their lifetimes.

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“We found that everyone under 40 today will live an unprecedented life in terms of their lifetime exposure to heat waves, droughts and floods,” Wim Thiery, a climate scientist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, who led the research, said. “This is true even under the most conservative scenarios.

According to the researchers, climate change will potentially affect children in developing countries more acutely. Even with reduction in greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris Agreement, a global climate pact signed by more than 190 countries, the burden will still remain disproportionate. 

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While the results are a cause of concern, Thiery said it’s likely that “impacts on people’s lives will be even greater than the study estimates.” 

“We don’t account for the fact that a bad heat wave might last twice as long in the future as it does today,” Thiery said.

He added that the researchers also “considered extreme events in isolation, which means the study didn’t cover how the impacts of such disasters could be amplified if they coincide.”

“There’s a tendency for these things to occur at the same time,” Thiery said. “Think about heat waves and droughts or river flooding and tropical cyclones.”

But, Thiery said, “there’s reason for hope. If countries can make aggressive cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions and limit the effects of global warming, some of the study’s most dire scenarios can be avoided.”

The 2021 UN Climate Change Conference is scheduled to convene from October 31 to November 12 in Glasgow, Scotland, where countries are expected to set forth ambitious targets to reduce emissions by 2030.

“This should be a call for action,” Thiery said. “We have it in our hands to avoid the worst of global warming. For all of us alive today, we need to combat climate change.”