Climate Change Could Result in “Mass Casualty”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, to climate change in the United States and new obstacles thrown up by the Supreme Court. It is just ruled to curb the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions. This comes amid a period of extreme weather around the world, with over 40 million Americans under heat alerts last week. Kristie Ebi has been researching the health risks of climate change for decades. And she tells Hari Sreenivasan that response systems must be improved to prevent more deaths.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Professor Kristie Ebi, thanks so much for joining us. We just had a result from the Supreme Court that says that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have that broad authority to regulate coal-fired power plants and shift them towards cleaner sources, that they have to tailor a specific kind of proposition to individual power plants. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, what is this sort of a ruling do to our efforts to fight climate change?

KRISTIE EBI, PROFESSOR, GLOBAL HEALTH, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON: This is, needless to say, a very disappointing ruling. And it’s out of step with the understanding of climate science. And it’s out of step, frankly, with where our economy is going. We know that the number of jobs in one of the fastest-growing sectors is all in renewables. The cost of renewables have dropped significantly. And an announcement that got very little press was when all of the major auto companies said they’re going to get out of internal combustion engines. Industries moving on. Industry understands the future needs to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and industries moving toward them. We know that the coal industry is dying out in the U.S. It’s no longer economical. That renewable — the cost of renewables have dropped significantly. Giving and recognizing the EPA has that authority would’ve helped move this transition faster. Delaying this means that we are going to continue as a nation to significantly contribute to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We’re going to continue to damage the health and well-being of Americans, and of people around the world. And it’s a very disappointing ruling.

SREENIVASAN: We are hearing a headline here, a headline there about, more often than not, homeless people who are dying in extreme heat conditions in the United States. And you and climate and climate researchers around the world are telling us that this is going to be normal. That the temperatures are increasing but the — these deaths are preventable.

EBI: This is a very important issue. Our temperatures are rising. We’re seeing more intense and longer heat waves. And those most are vulnerable, including the unhoused, unless we do more to protect them, are expected to die in increasing numbers as we have these more heat waves, higher summer temperatures.

SREENIVASAN: Just the other day we had dozens of people die in the back of a trailer. They were being smuggled across the border. And again, there are lots of causes for this. But ultimately what led to their death was the heat inside that trailer. And that’s not something that we heard about 10 years ago or 15 years ago. Nearly at the same rates that we’re hearing about today. And I’m wondering, this combined with the stories of unhoused people dying in extreme heat, is this a part of what’s going to be normal for us to hear as the summers get hotter?

EBI: If we don’t make any changes, then yes. But we knew — we really do have to start thinking differently about our future. It is going to be hotter. And when you think about so many activities, so many policies we have. All of them were developed, just assuming that the weather is constant. That is no longer the case. And people don’t factor that into decisions, the human smuggling, which is just a huge tragedy in many dimensions. They don’t think about the weather. They don’t think about what that could mean for all of those poor people in the back of that truck. So, unless we can really move our policies. Unless we can recognize the interconnectedness of all of the vulnerabilities that there is, as you said, lots of reasons for human smuggling. We need to address those. We need to address ways to ensure that people can stay in their countries, which is what their preference is. We need to find ways to address multiple different challenges to our societies and recognize that climate change is a stress multiplier.

SREENIVASAN: Are there any specific populations that are at greater risk say, for example, pregnant women.

EBI: There is a real risk with pregnant women. There’s a growing number of a study showing that during the last period of pregnancy, and it’s still being defined, during heat waves we’ll have more low-birth-weight babies. So, babies that come early and are smaller then. And there can be consequences for those children for years depending on how it’s medically managed. There’s also an increase in stillbirths during some periods of pregnancy. And so, pregnant women do need to be protected. Outdoor, workers adults at the age of 65. Children under the age of one, physiologically can’t — really manage this higher core body temperature. People who take certain drugs, like beta blockers or some psychotropic drugs reduce the ability of your body to sweat. The list is quite long, which is why we need these comprehensive plans for how to bring together all of our city services so that we can make sure that we can protect people.

SREENIVASAN: Just this year, areas in India and Pakistan, experienced just scorching temperatures that would be unimaginable and it would’ve been almost science fiction. But they’re well, living through it right now already in 2022.

EBI: That’s correct. And there is an area of climate science called detection and attribution that looks at these individual events to determine the extent to which climate change could’ve made a difference. And we know for some of these heat waves in India, the one that we had here in Seattle a year ago, into Northern Scandinavia, in Japan that have — heat waves have occurred. That would be virtually impossible without climate change. That these are climate change-fueled events. And the climatologist tells us we’re entering into a period where almost all of our extreme advances are going to be made more extreme fire changing climate.

SREENIVASAN: How does climate change, that might be caused in some other part of the world, how is that an accelerant to a hurricane becoming worse or a heat wave becoming worse?

EBI: When we think about the distribution, for example, temperature in our region or the distribution that we were used to when we were growing up, it forms a nice curve that’s called the bell-shaped curve because it looks like a bell. And as we burned more fossil fuels, removing the median of that, the average of that to a higher temperature. But at the same time, that higher temperature, the shape of the curve is coming down and flattening and going further out to the right. And we’re seeing a much bigger increase in extreme events than one would have expected just because of the dynamic of the climate system. And the climate system needed to do something with all this energy that we’re putting into it.

SREENIVASAN: So, some of that energy goes back into, say, the Gulf Coast and the waters. And then those waters end up warmer and the warmer waters are worse for those hurricanes?

EBI: You’re exactly right. The — those higher temperatures in the oceans are driving the strength of hurricanes. We’re not necessarily going to see more hurricanes, but there’s going to be a change in the distribution to more intense hurricanes. Just as with precipitation. We’re seeing about the same number of precipitation events, but a shift to much heavier precipitation events.

SREENIVASAN: You know, as you are saying this answer, it’s interesting to me because the number of hurricanes that I’ve covered, there usually is some sort of a plan that kicks in a few days in advance. There are people who take it seriously. Infrastructure is moved into place or moved out of harm’s way. And we don’t really think of heat waves are extreme heat that way. And I guess we’re just — we’re willing to live with the casualties.

EBI: When we may think about these large heat waves, for example, the heat dome in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, the estimates are being refined, but currently we are thinking about 1,000 excess deaths. And if we had any other kind of event that killed 1,000 people, in just a few days, we would call it a mass casualty event. But we don’t. We don’t think about heat as the hazard it can be.

SREENIVASAN: This week, King County, which houses Seattle, created, kind of, an extreme heat plan, and that was, I think, their first-ever. Why did

they have to take the steps?

EBI: We didn’t have one last year when we have the heat dome. There was real efforts by King County, by the cities to do everything they could to help protect people during the heat dome. But these systems require time to put together. When you think about all the different city services you want to have at the table, it’s not just the health department or the meteorologist department. But you also want the police, the fire department, EMT, your emergency departments who is responsible for talking with the elderly care institutes. Who are the trusted voices for redline districts? And you start thinking of all the different services, all the different representatives, it takes a while to get everybody together and make sure you are coordinated on a plan. For example, the city opened some cooling shelters. But how do you find out where those shelters are? How do you get to those? Are you expecting people to walk to the bus when it’s 108 degrees and wait for a bus to go to a cooling shelter? Do you keep the shelter open overnight? Our temperatures at night are 80 degrees, which in June is just unheard of here in Seattle. And so, making all of those decisions, making sure all that works together, requires time and requires coordination. So, it’s really important that cities start working on this before they have their first major heat wave so that they are prepared when it does happen.

SREENIVASAN: I mean, there have been analysis that show that these extreme heat events are more — what? They’ve more than doubled in the last 40 years and that this is affecting almost a quarter of the world’s population?

EBI: That’s correct. And the projections are we could have a 15 to 20-fold increase in these events, depending on the extent to which we control our greenhouse gas emissions.

SREENIVASAN: 15 to 20-fold, sorry. That’s just — so — does that just — break that down for me. Are we talking about the increase in likelihood of one happening or the increased frequency of it happening?

EBI: The intensity of these events are projected to increase. So, if you look at a one in a 50-year heat wave. So, a heat wave we expect about one every 50 years, what we saw back in the Middle Ages would occur 15 times more often. And we’re seeing even more extreme events. A few years, ago and there was a heat wave in Scandinavia, and the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute said that this was a one in three-million-year event, which is pretty hard to wrap your head around that these events are so extreme, it’s hard for us to imagine.

SREENIVASAN: And considering that this is a global problem, this is — and that the bulk of the carbon that’s released into the air is happening from industrialized nations, at the United Nations level or the climate conference level, what’s happening to try to mitigate some of the effects that are disproportionately going to be felt by poor countries?

EBI: Under the United Nations framework convention on climate change are four different funds that the high-income countries put money into to help with adaptation which is trying to do things like put in place early warning systems. Also, to help people in terms of agriculture water, a whole range of issues. And also, to help low and middle-income countries reduce their burning of fossil fuels of oil, and gas, and coal. One of the challenges we see in health when you look across those funds, less than half a percent of those funds of gone towards health. That the majority of the funds have gone towards the significant challenges we’re facing with food and water security. Which is critically important. But we also need that investment in health. And there is starting to be a shift under those adaptation funds to put more funding into the health challenges so we don’t have people suffering and dying in heat waves.

SREENIVASAN: And now I know that the UN had cut some of the climate aid to poor countries. What kind of impact is it going to have? Because, as you mentioned, it takes a while for $1 to translate into policy on the ground.

EBI: As you said, the low and middle-income countries, for most of them, collectively, have very low emissions of greenhouse gases. 80 percent of our emissions come from just 20 countries. And so, these countries are coming into the convention, and very appropriately saying, we’re suffering. In the language used under the United Nations framework convention on climate change, this is loss and damage. That they’re suffering losses and damages. And it’s not their fault. They didn’t emit these greenhouse gases. And they are, collectively, have a strong voice. And they need to have more funding to help them manage the kinds of crises they’re facing because of climate change that they didn’t cause.

SREENIVASAN: Do you think that there is any sort of a moment that can impress upon the richer countries, the responsibility that they have?

EBI: There’s a couple of different answers to that. First is, one of the changes I’ve seen over the last 15 years, is climate change is no longer within a country’s ministry of environment. It’s now, all of country issue. It’s a security issue for many countries. And so, this becomes a different kind of negotiation. And so, one hears stories about countries, like the U.S., going in talking with countries saying, here are some goals we’d like to achieve. And the response from the country is, you need to talk to us about climate change. And so, it’s coming in at a very different level. The second is, it can be discouraging looking at what’s going on at the national level. And I encourage people to look sub-nationally. At all the cities that have set their goals for adaptation and for mitigation. All that’s going on sub-nationally, all that’s going on in our businesses, there is so much change, positive change going on. And to pay attention to that positive change and contribute to it is going to help move our politicians at the national level further forward.

SREENIVASAN: Professor Kristie Ebi from the Univesity of Washington, thanks so much for joining us.

EBI: Thank you very much for covering this.