A person in their 40s now will be nearing 70 in the year 2050. And they won’t be alone, because the world is undergoing an unprecedented and inexorable shift: by 2050, scientists project, more than 20% of Earth’s population will be over 60.
That demographic shift coincides with another major change: the Earth heating up because of human-caused climate change.
The confluence of those two factors represents an enormous risk, says Giacomo Falchetta, the lead author of a new paper published Tuesday in Nature Communications. Combined, the number of people at risk worldwide from chronic extreme heat is set to at least double by 2050, he says. The number of older people regularly exposed to both chronic and acute heat will grow by about 200 million people worldwide by mid-century—and slow climate action today could push that number up much higher, he says.
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