Emily Atkin, writing in Wired, presents a brief, grim summary of what unchecked carbon combustion means for humans:
“We’ve got a new normal,” said Howard Frumkin, a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Washington. “I think all of the studies of trends to date show that we’re having more extreme heat, and we’ve having higher average temperatures. Superimposed on that, we’re seeing more short-term periods of extreme heat. Those are two different trends, and they’re both moving in the wrong direction.” Based on those trends, the US Global Change Research Program predicts “an increase of thousands to tens of thousands of premature heat-related deaths in the summer ... each year as a result of climate change by the end of the century.” And that’s along with the deaths we’ve already seen: In 2015, Scientific American noted that nine out of the ten deadliest heat waves ever have occurred since 2000; together, they’ve killed 128,885 people.
In other words, to understand how global warming wreaks havoc on the human body, we don’t need to be transported to some imagined dystopia. Extreme heat isn’t a doomsday scenario but an existing, deadly phenomenon—and it’s getting worse by the day.
There are a wide range of damaging effects that global warming will have on the planet: changing precipitation patterns (interfering with our ability to grow crops), the strength and frequency of severe storms, the collapse of ecosystems, to name a few. But we need look no further than the rise in temperatures itself as the deadly consequence of carbon profiteering.
Unfortunately, the political party that holds the legislative and executive branches in the largest carbon emitter in the world does not care that people die, so that they and their oligarch friends can pocket the proceeds.