A✌️488-word✌️3-minute✌️read
This hit close to home.
As someone in their seventh decade of life, news about age piques my curiosity. More importantly, this particular story could offer the climate movement a new and more forceful messaging pathway.
I continually encourage climate activists to focus on the financial cost of climate change to the average person. My belief in the necessity of that strategy hasn’t changed. However, there may now be a two-prong approach that would more effectively get the average person’s attention.
A new study suggests that heat waves have the same impact on aging as smoking and drinking alcohol.
Jackpot!
Climate change is costing me money and might shorten my life?
Of course, getting people to buy into that message is the challenge. The financial component is getting easier and easier as expenses like insurance continue to escalate due to losses from severe weather. Convincing people that severe weather shortens one’s life requires the science to be more definitive.
This particular research – published in Nature Climate Change – looked at 25,000 people in Taiwan. To determine the long-term impact of heatwaves, researchers reviewed medical exam data over a 15-year period. During that timeframe – 2008 to 2022 – Taiwan residents were exposed to 30 heat waves.
The conclusion: for every extra 1.3 °C a person was to exposed to, it added on average between 8 and 11 days to their biological clock. That doesn’t sound like much, but take that estimate and multiply it by 30 and you’re talking about the potential of shaving almost a year off of a person’s life.
That might get someone’s attention, particularly all the snow and sun birds that have moved to places like Florida or Arizona.
The study found that people living in rural areas and those doing manual labor saw the biggest health impact. Researchers speculated that was due to access or lack thereof to air conditioning. The researchers also attributed improved access to air conditioning for the impact of heat waves on aging decreasing over the 15-year study period.
The fly in the ointment with this study is the word “suggests.” The study is not definitive and shouldn’t be portrayed as such. However, it is supported by previous studies that link environmental and social stress to aging. The findings are also consistent with similar studies conducted in the U.S. and Germany.
Additional research is necessary. The word “suggests” needs to be replaced with a more concrete descriptor. Still, sheer logic strengthens the notion, and the climate community can leverage the work to craft a harder-hitting message.
Think about a warning label on the sun similar to that used on cigarettes. That might get people’s attention.
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