A charity warned that climate-related disasters caused “dazzling” losses in 2021, with some incidents causing losses of tens of billions of dollars.
A report by Christian Aid focused on the 15 worst extreme weather last year, including floods, storms, and droughts, warning that they caused deaths, displacements, and financial costs around the world.
According to a poll conducted by aid agencies, as the impact of rising temperatures on more extreme weather becomes more and more obvious, the British believe that climate change should be the top priority of the British government in 2022, rather than health care and the economy. .
whirlwind
According to the report, 10 of the extreme events caused losses of more than 1.1 billion pounds, including the loss of 49 billion pounds caused by Hurricane Ida in the United States in August, and the total loss of 33 billion pounds caused by the flood that swept parts of Europe in July.
Christian Aid said that most of the financial cost estimates only include insurance losses, so the actual price may be much higher.
In rich countries where property values are high and insurance can be afforded, the financial costs of disasters are usually higher.
But some of the most destructive extreme events in 2021 hit poor countries that contributed little to the problem of climate collapse. Disasters caused food shortages and forced thousands of people to flee their homes. For example, floods in South Sudan resulted in the displacement of more than 850,000 people.
Four of the 10 worst disasters occurred in Asia, with losses caused by floods and hurricanes totaling 18 billion pounds.
catastrophe
The report said that included heavy rains in China’s Henan Province, which caused major floods, 302 deaths and 13.3 billion pounds in losses.
According to the report, global warming is driving more intense rainstorms and making Pacific typhoons and Indian Ocean cyclones more extreme.
Scientists found that the extreme rains in Europe in July caused floods in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, killing at least 240 people and losing more than 43 billion U.S. dollars. However, due to the collapse of the climate, this type of rainfall is more likely and the situation is worse. severe.
The climate collapse may even have an impact on extreme cold. For example, the cold weather in Texas in February may be affected by the rapidly warming Arctic, and the cold weather in France in April caused severe damage to the early budding vineyards during the year. The temperature rises.
Dazzled
According to the report, insurance company Aon stated that it is expected that the global natural disasters in 2021 will exceed the insurance loss threshold of 100 billion U.S. dollars for the sixth time, and these six times have occurred since 2011.
The Savanta ComRes poll released with the report asked 2,197 people what the British government should focus on in its 2022 New Year’s resolution.
