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View all search resultsClimate change a global health emergency?
By weaponizing cherry-picked data and ignoring the far deadlier reality of cold temperatures, the WHO is once again sacrificing evidence-based public health to manufacture a costly, counterproductive climate emergency.
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A man uses an umbrella to shield against the sun as he walks past Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, on May 28, 2026, as a record-breaking early heat wave scorches swaths of Western Europe. (AFP/Simon Wohlfahrt)
A
s the FIFA World Cup is underway in North America, sensationalist headlines suggest that climate change could make the games "the most dangerous ever" because of the heat. Of course the claim is absurd, given that the previous tournament was played in considerably hotter conditions in Qatar, but it is an excellent example of the activist-driven climate alarm stories we see every summer.
Riding this wave, the World Health Organization is once again blurring the line between evidence-based public health and climate advocacy. A high-profile WHO commission made up of politicians and green advocates has urged the organization to declare climate change a "public health emergency of international concern".
This is a flashback to the 2010s when the WHO director general named climate change the most important health issue of the 21st century. COVID-19 arrived not long after, and the organization's preparedness and early response were found deeply wanting.
Clearly, the lesson was not learned.
The WHO commission’s headline claim is that climate change poses a “catastrophic threat to human health”. Its key evidence comes from a Lancet study showing heat deaths in Europe are rapidly rising, reaching 63,000 per year.
Even setting aside the peculiarity of a global health emergency built primarily on European data, the argument collapses under scrutiny.
European heat death risk has risen 82 percent since 1990. But heat mortality risk rises sharply with age, and Europe has aged dramatically. Since 1990, the share of the European population over 70 has increased 78 percent.
