When it comes to humanity’s future, Dr. Vanessa Kerry is not mincing words: “We are all dying from the climate crisis,” she said during our Devex @ UNGA 78 event on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last week, confirming the assertion of Devex Senior Global Reporter Colum Lynch that we have reached “peak gloom.”
In a separate conversation at the Clinton Global Initiative with Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar, Kerry was equally blunt. “If you look at this summer alone, it's been apocalyptic in terms of the events that we've seen, and it's killing us,” she said. “It's not going to kill us for future generations. It’s killing us today.”
Kerry, who is both the CEO of Seed Global Health and the World Health Organization’s special envoy for climate change and health, has ample evidence to back her up. Climate change is, above all, a global health hazard, and the majority of the suffering won’t come from collapsed infrastructure or physically being swept away in a flood, though of course there is that. Rather, the far greater threat to human life will be the rise of vector-borne diseases, food and water insecurity, and diminished sanitation. Around 132 million people will be driven into poverty by climate change; of those, 44 million will be from health-related impacts, according to the World Bank.
About the author
Lauren Evans@laurenfaceevans
Lauren Evans was formerly an Assistant Editor/Senior Associate in the Office of the President at Devex. As a journalist, she covers international development and humanitarian action with a focus on climate and gender. Her work has appeared in outlets like Foreign Policy, Wired UK, Smithsonian Magazine and others, and she’s reported internationally throughout East Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America.
