Thousands perish in unseasonable heat as ‘dangerous climate change is upon us’

Extreme heat is affecting billions of people and killing thousands, as fossil fuel consumption and its planet-warming emissions soar.

In recent weeks, more than 1,000 temperature records were shattered worldwide, reports the Washington Post. Scientists say the scorching heat proves once again that human-caused global warming "has so raised the baseline of normal temperatures that once-unthinkable catastrophes have become commonplace."

In Saudi Arabia, 1.8 million Muslims, many of them elderly, endured 51°C days while attempting Hajj, a pilgrimage from one's home to the holy city of Mecca. More than 1,300 worshippers died during Hajj rites this year, with unprecedented heatwaves believed to be a major factor behind the toll, reports BBC News.

It was like "walking in the road of death because of the heat and lack of water," Hind Hassan from Egypt told the New York Times, quoting a friend who had accompanied her aunt to Mecca, where she died.

The kingdom said it provided treatment to almost half a million people, including 141,000 unauthorized pilgrims, reports Bloomberg News. Some pilgrims avoid enrolling with the authorities to evade costly fees, but it means they do not officially have access to the 100,000 air-conditioned tents and free water the kingdom supplies to registered pilgrims.

"The majority who died this year were reportedly pilgrims who participated without official permission, highlighting how the poorest worshippers are most at risk as the costs of tours rise," writes Bloomberg.

In recent years, Saudi Arabia has introduced heat measures like spraying mist on outdoor walkways and guiding health services on heat stress. This year, authorities also sent text messages to worshippers, advising them to stay indoors during peak heat.

Those measures were helpful but "not sufficient," said Davide Faranda, research director at CNRS, a French state research organization. More shade and cooling stations, flexible schedules for rituals, real-time weather updates, better infrastructure, and more rigorous health screenings would help mitigate risks, he said.

Fossil Emissions Break Records

The Middle East, where economies like Saudi Arabia rely heavily on fossil fuel exploitation, is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. And despite renewables growth, demand for the product is soaring, reports The Guardian. The Energy Institute found that 2023 marked record fossil fuel consumption globally, driving more than 40 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in energy emissions for the first time.

Demand for coal, gas, and oil in the developing world is increasing, even as fossil use peaks in advanced economies amid a 13% renewables surge. Global coal consumption rose 1.6%, oil use rose 2%, while demand for gas "remained steady." India alone saw its fossil fuel consumption climb 8% in 2023.

"For the first time, more coal was used in India than Europe and North America combined," the institute said.

Scientists tend to analyze individual extreme weather events to determine if fossil-fuelled climate change influenced them. But what is "obvious," writes the Post, is that "humans have caused baseline temperatures to surge."

"We've got the highest greenhouse gas concentrations in the last three million years," said Michael McPhaden, a senior scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"Carbon dioxide traps heat, so the temperature of the planet is rising," he added. "It's real simple physics."

Lethal Heat Soars

India's capital New Delhi recorded its warmest night ever on June 19: 35.2°C, eight degrees above normal. During the daytime, the heat index stood at over 50°C in early June. Hundreds of people are known to have died in the city, including almost 200 homeless people, reports the Hindustan Times. And these fatalities were but the latest in a cascade of heat-related deaths since spring, with northern India especially afflicted. At least 200 people had died from heat stroke by June 3, many of them collapsing on the job, the Independent writes.

Temperatures were similarly lethal in Mexico, where the hottest temperature ever was recorded in June-51.9°C, in the Sonoran Desert, reports the Associated Press. Heatwaves have led to at least 125 deaths in Mexico since May, and rising temperatures also affected scores of howler monkeys, which reportedly dropped dead out of trees, overcome by extreme heat and dehydration. All of this was made "much more likely" by anthropogenic warming, say scientists.

"We'll never know the world that we knew in our childhood, where access to the outdoors didn't come with a fatal warning or a caution, which is going to become more and more the norm," Bushra Asghar, a Montreal-based youth climate organizer, told CBC News. Asghar's home province of Quebec and swathes of eastern Canada, the Midwest, and northeastern U.S., had their own encounters with extreme heat last week.

Meanwhile, in Europe, "heatwaves across Cyprus and Greece have left multiple people dead with Türkiye battling wildfires as temperatures soared above 40°C," as much as 12°C in excess of normal, reports Euronews. Italy is baking, too, in temperatures "10°C above seasonal averages," said Antonio Sanò, founder of the ilmeteo.it website.

'Climate Change is Already Upon us'

"It should be obvious that dangerous climate change is already upon us," Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at the U.S. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told the Washington Post.

"People will die because of global warming on this very day."

A Climate Central study confirms that 76 extreme heat waves across 90 countries between June 2023 and April 2024 put billions of people at risk. About 78% of the global population-6.3 billion people-experienced at least 31 days of extreme heat, hotter than 90% of temperatures observed in their local area over the 1991-2020 period.

And heat is only one aspect of the climate story. "Strong hurricanes are at least 14% wetter because the warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture," writes the Post. "And storm surges are unfolding in oceans that are in some places more than a foot higher than they were half a century ago-allowing floodwaters to reach heights never seen before."

"We have been predicting for at least the past two decades that extreme weather would become yet more dangerous as the world warms," Wehner said. "This is not a surprise."

Worker Safety Alarms

Scorching temperatures pose the greatest risk to those who labour in it-whether it's outdoors, like on farms and construction sites, or indoors, like in sweltering kitchens and poorly ventilated factories. "Between 1992 and 2017, heat stress killed more than 800 workers in the U.S., and injured more than 70,000," reports Bloomberg. American workers remain cruelly exposed to heat, with "just five states guaranteeing workers access to rest, shade, and water."

Unions are pushing the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to mandate extreme heat protection at the federal level, but "major business and industry groups, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are opposed to any new requirements," reports the New York Times.

Workers organizations are also now joining forces with environmental groups to petition the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency to declare extreme heat and wildfire smoke "major disasters" akin to hurricanes, floods and tornadoes.

In Canada, extreme heat protections for workers remain "patchwork," Anelyse Weiler, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Victoria, told EcoSocialists Vancouver in May. In their current form, last updated in 2005, British Columbia's heat stress protections only require that a worker's internal body temperature not exceed 38°C.

Worker Solidarity Network, which represents precarious and non-unionized workers, is pushing the provincial government to review other jurisdictions' heat exposure measures and establish a 'too hot to work' standard within the provincial Compensation Act.

Meanwhile, the Ontario New Democrats have partnered with the Ontario Federation of Labour to call for heat protection measures adequate to the province's rapidly overheating climate.