A report published this week by The Lancet, one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, provides an annual “check up” of how climate change is impacting public health, and how countries’ actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are reducing health risks. The research found that climate change is already damaging the health of millions worldwide...The deaths caused by unnatural disasters...are obvious, and the threat of extreme heat waves...to public health is clear. But there are many other climate impacts that are every bit as sinister, and potentially lethal...

Tragically, these burdens are being — and will be — borne mostly by children, the elderly and low-income vulnerable populations that have done little to cause climate change and have benefited the least from the burning of fossil fuels... These longer term and immediate health factors [of climate change] are why the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change called a comprehensive response to climate change “the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century."