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Climate change hits the young hardest. What will we tell our children?

On a Friday night in May 2008, Cyclone Nargis struck the Irrawaddy delta region of Myanmar. Over  the next few hours it would become the second deadliest cyclone in history, killing almost 150,000 people in the region.

A few weeks later, I went there as a young doctor to assess the damage for the UN.

I started at the village of Aung Laing where the cyclone hit first. Many of the bodies were unburied and lay piled on the shore. They were almost all young children. Out of a population of roughly 600 people, only one child had survived – a nine-year-old girl who showed me the tree she had clung to.

This experience has stayed with me. It showed me first-hand how vulnerable children are in any emergency. At the time, most people didn’t even consider the link between climate change and the cyclone, let alone the link between climate change and human health.

Now, thanks in no small part to the annual Lancet Countdown report, published today, and the efforts of its authors, we are starting to see climate change as the biggest existential threat we face as a species. Many lives around the world are already affected, and while no one will escape the consequences, it is children who will be disproportionately affected.

Children are more vulnerable to extreme weather events (as I witnessed in Myanmar), to prolonged heatwaves and droughts, and to infections.

A child's shoe near Aung Llaing  - Credit: Dr Chris van Tulleken
A child's shoe is found near Aung Llaing in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis Credit: Dr Chris van Tulleken

For example, it’s hard to overstate how dangerous droughts are to children. Less water means less washing, which enables the spread of infectious diseases from influenza to diarrhoea. It also means crop failure with subsequent malnutrition and increased vulnerability to those infections. A double jeopardy.

By every measurement, climate change is harmful to human health. Global action to achieve the Paris Agreement targets is essential, and it will bring wide health benefits, far beyond simply avoiding the harms like infection and malnutrition.

The air our children breathe will become cleaner. Currently over 90 per cent of children are exposed to air pollution levels above the WHO safe upper limits, increasing the risk of lung damage, pneumonia and asthma.

Our children’s diets and exercise patterns will also improve. The childhood obesity epidemic is fuelled by carbon intensive food production, transport and processing, as well as urban design that limits physical activity and active transport.

These benefits would save trillions of dollars worldwide and would far outweigh any additional cost. The alternative path takes us beyond bad weather, poor air and obesity.

A picture of the extensive flooding caused by Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, taken from a plane window - Credit: Dr Chris van Tulleken
A picture of the extensive flooding caused by Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, taken from a plane window Credit: Dr Chris van Tulleken

There is no metric in the Lancet Countdown report for conflict, but previous studies have linked increased heat and drought with war. Reading between the lines of this report, it is impossible not to foresee conflict increasing as disease and food shortages drive mass migration.

No one is more vulnerable to war than children. They are physically, politically and immunologically vulnerable. Children have no money, no vote, no independent ability to move or migrate. They can't flee war and are less likely to survive the infections and trauma it causes.

The Lancet Countdown report treads a fine line between optimism and despair. It's hard to conceive of the short-sightedness that has brought us to this point. We are paying three times for the means of our own destruction.

First, by purchasing the oil, coal, gas, power. Second, through the effects on our health and health systems. And finally, in taxes which keep prices so low that renewable energy sources struggle to compete.

The vested interests that benefit from this situation, political and corporate, have been motivated by extreme cynicism. Information has been suppressed, science distorted. The vast financial benefits have been privatised whilst we all share in the harms.

What do children think about what we – the adults – have been doing?

For the last eight years, when not working in a hospital, I have been making television programmes about science and medicine for six to 12-year-olds.

I go to schools all over the country where the same set of values is drummed into them – kindness, generosity, compassion, and respect.

So, how do you justify fuel subsidies to a smart 10-year-old? Any explanation must centre around selfishness, corruption on a galactic scale, and a spectacular disregard for people and the planet.

Consciously or not, children have started to realise that the standards we, as adults, demand from them are not ones we are holding ourselves to.

Through the school climate strikes, they are discovering a form of political power. This may be the lever for change that saves us from ourselves.

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