A sobering new analysis from the 2025 Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change has revealed that rising global temperatures are now producing an average of about one heat-related death every minute worldwide.
Compiled by a team of 128 experts from more than 70 institutions including World Health Organization and University College London (UCL) under the leadership of Dr Marina Romanello, the report warns that the health impacts of climate change are no longer distant threats but real, urgent and escalating.
According to the findings, the rate of heat-related deaths has increased by roughly 23 per cent since the 1990s—even after accounting for population growth—and reached an estimated average of 546,000 deaths per year between 2012 and 2021. Professor Ollie Jay of the University of Sydney, who participated in the research, highlighted that the figure equates to “approximately one heat-related death every minute throughout the year”.
The report notes that in recent years the average person has been exposed to 19 life-threatening heat days annually, of which 16 days are attributable – via human calculations – to climate change driven by fossil-fuel emissions. In addition, it estimates that extreme heat prevented many from working—agricultural labourers and construction workers in particular—and in 2024 resulted in roughly 639 billion hours of lost labour, contributing to economic losses equal to about 6 per cent of GDP in the world’s least developed countries.
This staggering toll is compounded by the fact that governments continue to subsidise the fossil-fuel industry at high levels—an estimated US$956 billion in 2023 alone—while the industry and its financiers expand production, despite the world having declared a target to limit warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. The report points out that the 100 largest fossil-fuel companies increased projected production up to March 2025, which would lead to CO₂ emissions three times those compatible with the Paris Agreement goals.
Wildfires and air pollution are central to the crisis: the report states that in 2024 a record 154,000 deaths were caused by wildfire-smoke exposure, and droughts and heatwaves have resulted in 123 million additional people facing food insecurity in 2023 compared with the 1981-2010 average.
Dr Romanello said the findings “paint a bleak and undeniable picture of the devastating health harms reaching all corners of the world” and warned that “the destruction to lives and livelihoods will continue to escalate until we end our fossil fuel addiction”. She added that the solutions “exist” — including clean energy, urban adaptation, and healthier, climate-friendly diets — but stressed that “if we keep on financing fossil fuels … a healthy future is not possible.”
Despite some progress, such as reductions in coal-burning saving about 400 lives daily over the past decade, the report says that the current scale of fossil-fuel subsidy and production expansion more than offsets these gains.
