Record loss of outdoor work hours due to heat: report
Poppy Johnston |
Australia lost a record 12 hours per person of potential outdoor work to intolerable heat in 2024, a Lancet Countdown report has revealed
Nearly 60 per cent of the 175 million possible labour hours were in construction, a sector already struggling with productivity and under pressure to deliver more homes to house the population affordably.
Hot and humid days halting outdoor work was estimated to cost around AU$8.2 billion last year.
The annual stocktake from the prominent medical journal says Australians were exposed to record-high hours of weather conditions posing “moderate” or “higher” risk of heat stress if outdoors doing moderate physical activity.
The global study, written by 128 experts, found 12 of 20 indicators tracking health threats had reached “unprecedented levels” and set “concerning” new records in 2024.
Last year was the hottest on record and the first to exceed 1.5C mean annual temperatures above pre-industrial times, the limit set by the Paris Agreement.
The global climate pact has not yet been broken, however, as the commitment relies on long-term trends.
Australia endured its second-hottest year on record in 2024, with elevated ocean temperatures putting stress on marine ecosystems and fuelling heavy rainfall events.
Executive director of the Lancet Countdown at University College London, Marina Romanell, said the annual stocktake “painted a bleak and undeniable picture of the devastating health harms reaching all corners of the world”.
“The destruction to lives and livelihoods will continue to escalate until we end our fossil fuel addiction and dramatically up our game to adapt,” Dr Romanell said.
Fine particle pollution from wildfire smoke caused a record 154,000 deaths worldwide in 2024, with climate change fuelling the hotter and dryer condition for more frequent and intense fires.
Polluting fuels also continue to cause avoidable deaths, as many as 2.3 million in 2022 in 65 countries with limited access to clean energy and therefore exposed to air pollution from dirty fuels used in households.
The cold is still killing more people globally than heat but high-temperature mortalities are expected to overtake cold ones in most regions without urgent action to adapt and cut emissions.
Failure to prevent the warming effects of climate change has led to a 23 per cent jump in heat-related deaths globally since the 1990s, to roughly 546,000 a year.
In Australia, the annual number of deaths attributable to heat has jumped 83 per cent from 1990-1999 to 2012-2021, to around 980 mortalities each year.
Annual international negotiations on climate action are due to take place in November in Brazil.
AAP
