AS MANY as ten thousand newborn babies died prematurely within the past two decades owing to global heating caused by humans, new analysis published on Monday suggests.
The study, by the website Carbon Brief, reports that one in three newborn babies who died because of abnormal heat would have survived had climate change not pushed temperatures beyond normal levels. The study examined low- and middle-income countries between 2001 and 2019, and the findings equate to 10,000 lost babies a year, it says.
The current level of global heating is around 1.2ºC; the world is currently on a trajectory to reach 2.8ºC, the United Nations says.
Romario Dohmann, from the Evangelical Church of the River Plate in Argentina, is at the COP29 climate talks, which began on Monday of last week in Baku, Azerbaijan.
“The Bible teaches us that God placed people on earth to take care of it, emphasising our collective role as its stewards rather than exploiters,” he said. “This stewardship implies a duty to protect and care for creation. The climate emergency we are facing today is an important sign that we have failed to be good stewards of God’s creation. We are most urgently called to change our ways, and to work towards climate justice.”
The two-week summit in Baku is into its final stretch. Government ministers from around the world are due to arrive this week; top of the agenda is the task of agreeing a new climate finance goal.
Participating countries have agreed that wealthy nations in the global North, with their history of large carbon emissions, have a moral and legal responsibility to deliver funding to the global South, which is bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. This money is to be used to slow and ultimately reverse the changing climate, deal with losses and damages caused by extreme weather, and fund the transition to clean energy in poorer countries.
Henrik Grape, coordinator of the World Council of Churches’ working group on climate change, said that there needed to be greater urgency in the negotiating halls in Baku: “Today we are living in a climate emergency, and still COP29 acts like we have all the time in the world for the transition. But we are in need for a transformation if we should avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change. And this transformation must start among the ten per cent richest of the world, since they are responsible for 50 per cent of the emissions.”
The climate talks are expected to ramp up in the coming days with the arrival of government ministers who make the final decisions. The UK’s Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband, arrived in Baku on Sunday. The UK has been praised by people in climate- vulnerable countries for their new pledge, made last week at COP29, to reduce emissions by 81 per cent by 2035 from 1990 levels (News, 15 November).
Joe Ware is Senior Climate Journalist at Christian Aid.