There is two bad news: the first, a child born in Europe in 2025 will live on average three years longer in extreme climatic conditions that favor fires compared to a child born in 1950. The second, the situation is worse in the Mediterranean area, where the extra years become five on average.
These predictions, contained in a study published on Environmental Research Lettersdo nothing but highlight for the umpteenth time the gravity of the climate situation we are experiencing, underlining how, if we continue not to (want) to see the comet that is crashing into our planet like the politicians of Don’t Look Upthings are going to get very bad.
No, it’s not because you will live longer
Using climate models and assuming different global warming scenarios, the researchers estimated how exposure to weather conditions conducive to extreme fires in Europe might change over the lifetime of several generations.
By combining climate projections with data on population and life expectancy, they calculated the cumulative exposure of people born in different years, from 1950 to 2025.
The results show that younger generations will be exposed to conditions of high fire danger for more years: the bad news is that 86% of the increase in exposure is attributable to climate change rather than to increases in life expectancy. The effects are most pronounced in southern Europe, particularly Portugal, and increase with global warming.
The numbers
If current climate policies remain unchanged, global temperatures are estimated to increase by 2.6°C in 2100: this will mean that children born in 2025 in the Mediterranean area will have to live five years longer in climate conditions favorable to fires than their grandparents.
“Young people are the least responsible for climate change, yet they will have to bear its consequences the longest of all,” comments Rosa Pietroiusti, coordinator of the study.
Worse for the Portuguese
In Portugal, the future is even more leaden: according to estimates, we will go from 14 days a year of days with weather conditions favorable to fires in the twenty-year period 1950-1970 to 32 days in 2100. A Portuguese born in 2025 will have to live six and a half years of his life at risk of fire.
Not all is lost
There is one however: a glimmer of hope that, if those who govern us (especially overseas) understood once and for all that climate change is not the result of a conspiracy, it could become a powerful light at the end of the tunnel.
If we began to seriously reduce the use of fossil fuels, the years of living in fire-friendly conditions for adults of the future would be reduced on average by 1.3 in Europe, and by more than two in the most affected areas of the Mediterranean.
«The most encouraging part of our results is that this future is not yet inevitable», comments Wim Thiery, one of the authors, who concludes by recalling that the transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources is far from utopian: «With the decreasing costs of solar and wind energy, a rapid reduction in the use of fossil fuels is absolutely possible. Every fraction of a degree of warming we avoid translates directly into less exposure to fire-friendly weather conditions over a child’s lifetime, giving them the chance to live a longer, healthier life.”
