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SOURCE: Axios and The Lancet and The Guardian

DATE: October 31, 2017

SNIP: Climate change is hurting people’s health more than previously thought, a team of 63 doctors, scientists, and public health officials wrote in a report published Monday in the medical journal Lancet. “The human symptoms of climate change are unequivocal and potentially irreversible” the team warns, in the first of what is expected to be an annual report based on 40 indicators.

The upshot: The increasing waves of heat-related illnesses, mosquito-borne diseases and air pollution problems can be lessened if the world derives its energy needs from renewable sources instead of fossil fuels like coal and boosts its funding to make health systems more climate resistant.

What’s happening: The scientists found that climate change already is having an impact worldwide on health, labor productivity, food scarcity, the spread of infectious disease, and exposure to air pollution and heatwaves. Between 2000-2016, there was a 46% increase in the number of weather-related disasters.