No healthy longevity without a healthy planet
Authors: None The Lancet Healthy Longevity
Journal: The Lancet Healthy Longevity (2021)

The Lancet Countdown 2020, published on Dec 2, 2020, provides a grim outlook of the impact of climate change, emphasising the severe effects on our health and the resulting overwhelming strain on health-care systems. It reports record-high global temperatures that provide breeding ground for infectious diseases and that jeopardise food security. Because these effects will pose the greatest dangers for vulnerable groups, climate disruptions are widening pre-existing wealth-related and age-related divides. A key message of the report is the pressing need to address climate change now, because the window for the success of strategies is narrowing by the day. Yet, the sombre tone of the report is not mirrored in the sentiments of the general public and in the actions of governments. The discourse around climate change is largely dominated by concerns for our next generations—our children and grandchildren. Although such concerns are certainly not unfounded, the focus is misplaced: climate change is already affecting us. Regarding current populations, older people are disproportionately afflicted. A 54% increase in heat-related mortality in people older than age 65 years has been observed over the past 20 years, and nearly half of the people who died during Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy were older than age 65 years. Moreover, exposure to air pollution poses a greater risk of adverse health effects for older people, causing or exacerbating respiratory conditions, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder. Because climate stresses will continue to render some regions uninhabitable, forced migration and community displacement will see many older people left behind, often due to limited mobility and a greater reluctance to leave the homes and homelands to which they are strongly attached. Those older people who do migrate are more vulnerable than are migrants of other ages, reflected by their classification as “persons with special needs” by The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Older migrants face greater health risks, such as greater multimorbidity and poorer mental health, compounded by language barriers, reduced access to employment, services and documentation, and greater discrimination and isolation in their foreign environments. As our population continues to age, with those older than 65 years outnumbering children by 2050, we must recognise that any actions to promote healthy longevity cannot be taken in isolation without actions to also ensure a healthy planet. Ageing well is impossible in an unhealthy or actively inhospitable environment. Our current issue includes a Comment by Mavrodaris and colleagues, which calls for synergistic solutions to address both healthy ageing and climate change—examples include removing access barriers to public transportation and transitioning to sustainable diets. By placing too great a focus on the effects of climate change on future generations, we also fail to recognise the effects already affecting all generations. Such failure stems from and perpetuates blame and, more crucially, ageism. With young voices galvanising climate demonstrations that express anger and frustration at the previous actions of the older generation that caused climate change and the current inaction in rectifying these changes, the intergenerational rift has further deepened. A 2019 speech by Greta Thunberg drives home this rift: “the older generations are failing us.” The dismissive phrase ‘OK boomer' has become the slogan for younger generations condemning older people's muted response to or dismissal of climate change. (Notably, intergenerational conflict is not only driven by the younger generation, epitomised by Josep Borrell's description of the climate concerns of younger people as the ‘Greta [Thunberg] Syndrome'.) Tackling climate change does not require a culprit, and such discourse both ignores the ongoing consequences on our most vulnerable members of society and derails constructive discussions. To meet our climate targets, repairing the intergenerational divisions exacerbated by climate change and acting collectively to achieve a healthy planet are imperative. We must cease placing blame on the older generation and must shed notions that older people will remain unscathed by our changing planet, because this is unfounded and unproductive. The Lancet Countdown 2020 underscores that our health is contingent on the health of our planet, with clean energy, clean air, and safe drinking water key components to supporting healthy longevity for both humanity and the environment. We must act now to save not only our children but ourselves. For more on the effects of displacement on older people see https://www.internal-displacement.org/sites/default/files/publications/documents/201206-the-neglected-generation-thematic-en.pdfFor more on migrating older people see https://www.unhcr.org/older-persons and https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2019/05/UNHCR-Expert-Group-meeting-on-aging_Lange.pdfFor Josep Borrell's description see https://www.ft.com/content/b16f5558-49c9-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441 For more on the effects of displacement on older people see https://www.internal-displacement.org/sites/default/files/publications/documents/201206-the-neglected-generation-thematic-en.pdf For more on migrating older people see https://www.unhcr.org/older-persons and https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2019/05/UNHCR-Expert-Group-meeting-on-aging_Lange.pdf For Josep Borrell's description see https://www.ft.com/content/b16f5558-49c9-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441 The 2020 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: responding to converging crisesFor the Chinese, French, German, and Spanish translations of the abstract see Supplementary Materials section. Full-Text PDF Healthy ageing for a healthy planet: do sustainable solutions exist?In terms of both scale and impact, population ageing has far-reaching implications for our planet, not least as a major driver of population growth and consequent ever-increasing human demands on natural resources and ecosystems. Worldwide in 2018, for the first time in history, people aged 65 years and older outnumbered children younger than 5 years,1 with two-thirds of the world's older population now living in low-income and middle-income countries. Increases in life expectancy and subsequent population growth will fundamentally affect sustainable development efforts to eradicate poverty, achieve food security, ensure sustainable water supplies, build inclusive and resilient communities, and ensure sustainable consumption. Full-Text PDF Open Access