Children born now will be exposed to heat waves on average seven times more often in their lifetime than people born in 1960. They will also experience twice as many wildfires on average, 2.6 times more droughts, 2.8 times more floods, 1.5 times more tropical cyclones, and nearly three times as many crop failures as people born 60 years ago. This is apparent from an international scientific study, which was published on Monday in the renowned magazine Science.
“Climate disruption does not only affect future generations, as you often hear. People under the age of 40 today will live unprecedented lives in terms of exposure to drought, heat waves, crop failures and floods,” said Wim Thiery, climate scientist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and lead author of the study. “And this even under the most ambitious climate change mitigation scenarios.”
Thiery and his co-authors wanted to investigate whether climate change really is a problem that affects different generations differently, as activists like Greta Thunberg often point out. The damage to young generations is also often cited in the growing number of lawsuits against companies and governments. Are the human rights of a 15-year-old really being violated by climate disruption? “I’ll leave the legal side to the lawyers,” says Thiery, “but the results of the investigation are clear. And that makes the climate crisis fundamentally different from, for example, a problem such as poverty, where age plays a less distinctive role.”
Forest fires
The international research team looked at droughts, heat waves, crop failures, river flooding, tropical cyclones and forest fires. Combining climate science and demographics, the researchers calculated the lifetime exposure to those disasters for each generation born between 1960 and 2020. And this for every country in the world and for every common global warming scenario.
Research leader Thiery is 34 himself and has young children, but he wants to emphasize that the research meets all scientific standards. “It only takes up three pages in Science, but we worked on it for 2.5 years, it’s at Science audited by six outsiders, and we had to write 90 pages to answer their questions,” says Thiery, speaking of the most extensive research in his ten-year career.
Worse off in Asia and Africa
Not all young generations are equally affected everywhere. The 53 million children born in Europe and Central Asia since 2016 will experience about four times more climate extremes. The 172 million children in Sub-Saharan Africa, almost six times more. If you look at heat waves, it is even fifty times more for the children in Africa.
“Our results underline the great importance of the Paris Climate Agreement for protecting young generations around the world,” added Thiery. “If we succeed in drastically reducing our emissions in the coming years, we can prevent the worst consequences for children worldwide. At the same time, we have a sobering message for youth in poor countries. It faces an incredible number of climate extremes, even with the most ambitious climate policy.”
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