If climate change becomes more severe, will humans survive?

Climate change can impact human health in many ways. In fact, many doctors think that climate change is a health emergency, more than an environmental emergency. Climate change will lead to more extreme weather events, like heatwaves, bushfires, floods and severe storms, and these all have the potential to take lives. Smoke from bushfires is also a problem as it can travel a long way and cause people to be sick when they are nowhere near the fire.  

Climate change can also cause problems for farming, where it might be too hot or too dry for crops to grow. That places pressure on farmers to produce enough healthy food, like fruits and vegetables. This can cause prices of these foods to increase, meaning people that have less money are unable to buy healthy food, which can increase their chances of getting sick. If food is scarce because of repeated drought, then this can lead to mass migration and economic or political instability. Climate change is also causing some insects, like mosquitoes, to move to places where they previously didn’t live. This is causing diseases like malaria, dengue and Ross River virus to spread. These sorts of impacts will be felt by some people more than others. People that are poor, live further away from health care, or people who make a living from agriculture will feel the effects first. But these people aren’t usually the ones that make decisions about society.  

Humans are very clever and will make lots of changes to adapt to these new conditions. However, it is always better (and cheaper) to prevent these conditions from happening in the first place. This is called mitigation. We still have time to mitigate climate change by switching to renewable energy, consuming less and using our cars less, but we need to be doing a lot more than we are, a lot quicker than we are. The video below from the World Health Organisation talks about some of the ways human health is affected by climate change.