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The younger generation will have to endure many times more extreme weather and climate disasters throughout their lifetimes, compared to previous generations.
Children born in 2021 will face, an average of twice as many wildfires, seven times more heatwaves, up to three times as many crops failure, droughts, and floods, compared to someone in their sixties.
In a paper published in the journal Science, researchers have brought to light the stark injustices being committed against the younger generation by their immediate ancestors. Researchers found that the effects of global warming, particularly extreme weather, will disproportionately affect the younger generations.
The analysis is the first to model extreme climate events and future scenarios extensively and apply the projections across demographic groups to determine the effects it has on different age groups, across their lifetimes.
The researchers say the outlook is troubling, particularly if the current pace of global warming continues as it is. Win Thiery, lead author of the paper and a climate scientist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, told NBC news that even in conservative scenarios, people under 40 today, will live an unprecedented life, exposed to heatwaves, droughts, and floods during their lifetimes.
The paper found that if the world takes solid actions to rapidly reduce greenhouse emissions and limit global warming to under 2 Celsius, the number of climate disasters experienced by the younger generations could be reduced by a quarter. And if the goal of limiting warming to under 1.5 Celsius is successful, the younger generation would only experience about half the number of climate disasters.
On the other hand, the researchers say the actual impact of global warming could be far higher than the paper estimates. The reason being, the research only focuses on the frequency of extreme weather events and didn’t take into account their severity and how long they last.
They also warned that their research only considered extreme events in isolation, and didn’t consider the effects of such disasters if more than one were to coincide.
Cover Image: Shutterstock
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