2022 Lancet Countdown

The key message from the 2022 Lancet Countdown global report was that “The health of people around the world is at the mercy of a persistent fossil fuel addiction.” The report found that despite the health harms, governments and companies in both high- and low-income countries continue to prioritise fossil fuel interests. Key findings included:

• Climate change is exacerbating food insecurity, health impacts from extreme heat, the risk of infectious disease outbreaks, and life-threatening extreme weather events
• The delay in adoption of clean energies has left households dependent on dirty fuels vulnerable to energy poverty, and exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution
• Governments continue to subsidise fossil fuels to hundreds of millions of dollars, while there is a lack of funding towards affordable, healthy, zero-carbon energy
• The world faces a critical juncture: a health-centred, aligned response to the compounding crises can still deliver a future where people can not only survive, but thrive.