The wildfires in Hawaii are another wake-up call that the climate crisis imperils our health

The world is on fire.

The devastating wildfires in Maui have led to at least 99 deaths with many hundreds more people unaccounted for and injured. We have seen homes and livelihoods destroyed and hospitals overwhelmed with smoke and burn victims.

These wildfires, fanned by winds from Hurricane Dora after years of drought, have undoubtedly been made worse by climate change. Increasing global greenhouse gas emissions are fueling extreme heat, accelerating changes in our environment and harming our global biodiversity.

This has led to unprecedented heat waves across the United States, Europe and Asia as many parts of the world are verging on uninhabitable. We’ve seen outbreaks of malaria in Texas and Florida and cholera in South Africa. And 2023 is set to be the worst dengue fever season on record.

We need to wake up to the fact that climate change is driving a vicious cycle of extreme weather conditions that are killing people. Without a doubt, the climate crisis is also a health crisis.

One in four deaths today is because of a preventable environmental cause. Each year, 7 million people die from air pollution — surpassing the global death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic — while extreme heat kills another 5 million people annually. Over the next decade, we will see an additional 250,000 deaths per year due to climate change.

We are woefully unprepared. The impacts of climate change on our health will not only lead to death and injury but also will overwhelm our health systems, leading to disruptions in services, and they will exacerbate inequities and fuel a cycle of poor health, poverty and instability.

Just look at our recent history. We have recently emerged from a global pandemic, which served as a canary in the coal mine. The rise in global disease burden led to collapse of our systems. While 90% of countries saw disruptions in almost every health service during the pandemic, the global economy lost trillions of dollars, and we lost progress with around 100 million people falling into poverty. Despite our pandemic fatigue, we cannot pretend that climate change is anything but our biggest health crisis to date. And we are still not ready.

The implications are not just profound; they also reach across every aspect of our lives. We face a direct impact on our health — increased risks of diseases carried by mosquitoes and animals, malnutrition and food insecurity, mental health burdens, and maternal and child mortality — and on our livelihoods, economic growth, and individual and community security and well-being as our ability to go to work or to school or to care for loved ones is affected.

Here in the United States, heat-related stress and illness alone cost the country more than $100 billion a year in lost productivity. This figure is expected to double by 2030.

We must start reducing our greenhouse gas emissions immediately. We must invest in human well-being, such as resilient health systems that can ensure adaptation to the growing burdens of disease and impacts of extreme weather and heat that are killing us daily.

We are facing a choice. And our leaders are making the wrong one. Our very human survival is on the line. We can choose differently, and we must.

The apocalyptic challenges we confront today reflect a third pandemic — one of poor and expedient choices by world leaders, the private sector and a powerful few who drive the decisions that continue to harm our planet and its population.

We must pivot to a new ambitious path.