Surely you, like me, no longer know if covid-19 persists among your family and friends, its omicron variant, flu, cold, stress, allergies, consequences of the virus or why the hell we can’t be completely healthy.
Obviously, the most prudent thing is that we go to the doctor to find out what is happening, but beforehand I tell you that, sadly, there is a general reason for many of the health ailments that we are suffering, and that is pollution and accelerated climate change.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that each year exposure to air pollution causes 7 million premature deaths and causes the loss of many years of healthy life, as most of us are seeing.
For children, the situation is becoming even more delicate, since pollution is causing a worrying reduction in growth and problems with lung function, respiratory infections and that there are more and more children with asthma.
In adults, ischemic heart disease and stroke are the most common causes of premature death attributed to air pollution. In addition, new evidence of other effects, such as diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases, is emerging.
Meanwhile, between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause around 250,000 additional deaths each year: 38,000 due to exposure of elderly people to heat, 48,000 due to diarrhoea, 60,000 due to malaria and 95,000 due to child malnutrition. And that the cost of direct health damage will be between 2 and 4 billion dollars between now and 2030.
And it is that during the last 30 years, each decade has been hotter. Sea levels are rising, glaciers are melting, rainy seasons are radically changing, and extreme weather events are becoming more intense and frequent.
And I have even more tragic news for you: Francisco Estrada, coordinator of the UNAM Climate Change Research Program, has just revealed that Mexico is experiencing warming above the world average (1.6 degrees Celsius against 1.2), the consequences of which in matters of health, environment and economy will suffer in this same decade.
As you will see, it is not a story of conservatives or radicals, it is true that air pollution along with climate change are one of the greatest threats to human health. What can we do?
For starters, governments and politicians must discourage the use of fossil fuels and end subsidies to companies that produce them to significantly reduce emissions of methane and hydrofluorocarbons. This alone could reduce the short-term warming trend by 50 percent.
And secondly, it is essential to stop the destruction of forests; on the contrary, it is urgent to restore them. Land degradation prevention and restoration practices could account for more than a third of the greenhouse gas abatement activities required to keep global warming below 2°C by 2030.
But I am sorry to tell you that there is little hope for improving our environmental condition and our health, as well as that of our children and grandchildren, and that is that in Mexico we are doing exactly the opposite of the new global guidelines to improve air quality and contain global warming. Here, the largest budgets are being used to build refineries and megaprojects that mean the felling and destruction of thousands of hectares of forests and jungles.
#Mexicans #sick #worse