It’s no secret that the population is getting older.
According to the World Health Organisation, between 2020 and 2050 the global number of people aged 60 and over will rise from 1 billion to 2.1 billion. Many wealthier countries already have disproportionately weighty older populations: where I live in Wales, over-60s are predicted to make up around 30% of the population by 2026. Now the rest of the world is catching up: by 2050, two thirds of over-60s worldwide will live in what we currently call low and middle-income countries.
An ageing population presents something of a challenge vis-à-vis the climate crisis. Of course, there is no set way of getting older. Many people lead healthy and active lives well into their later years, and medical advances are allowing for the extension of healthy living to an ever-greater age. All the same, ageing raises the likelihood of various health conditions, with many older people developing multiple health and social care needs. As society ages, so its care needs naturally increase, requiring greater resources and manpower to be funnelled into health and social care services. This trajectory becomes problematic when one considers that the current global ageing trend also coincides with increasing climate instability. A more extreme and unpredictable climate will not only exert greater pressure on the physical and mental health of the population – particularly its older members – but also strain the ability of societies to meet growing care needs.
Despite this growing challenge, and despite the Covid-19 pandemic bringing the specific health and social care needs of older people into the public eye, debates around the intersection between ageing and climate change remain relatively undeveloped. This is particularly true in the UK, a high-income country whose traditionally ‘temperate maritime’ climate has recently begun to experience extremes of weather that may become normal by the middle of this century. At a time when much of the global population is already being battered by drought, flooding, wildfires and other deadly climate events, British climate discourse remains relatively ignorant of the potential human tragedy that climate change heralds, especially for its oldest and most vulnerable citizens.
Instead, our climate debates remain curiously faceless. News cycles discuss electric cars, meat-free diets and controversial rewilding schemes, but are reticent about addressing the growing social dangers of climate change. When they do, the tone is usually either lazy or downright childish. Discourse on older people and climate change remains mired in ageist stereotype, such as the assumption that older people have no awareness of, or interest in, climate change. Even worse is the unhelpful claim that older people are inherently guilty of being the lead drivers of climate change – an argument that has little purpose beyond stoking intergenerational conflict for the sake of online advertising revenue.
How, then, can we begin to think more seriously about ageing and climate change? And what can we learn from viewing the impending climate catastrophe in parallel with the ageing spike that looms over the same horizon?
Ageing and climate risks
We can begin by identifying some of the likely effects of climate change on both the health of older people and on the ability of society to meet increased care needs. I should add that, while I take the UK as an example, much of what I discuss here can be applied equally to other wealthy and temperate (and ageing) countries that are only beginning to feel the shock of major climate disruption.
The most immediate risk is the warming of the planet itself. Higher temperatures endanger us all, but their harmful effects are a more acute danger to older people. 2023 was the hottest year on record globally, and the second hottest in the UK after 2022 – when a temperature above 40°C was recorded for the first time in England. According to the UK Health Security Agency, if temperatures continue to rise at their present trajectory, there will be around 10,000 deaths per year from heat exhaustion in the UK by 2050. The vast majority of these are expected to be older people, whose bodies are less able to regulate internal temperatures to respond to extreme weather.
As the planet warms up, so weather patterns become more dramatic and unpredictable. Drought, flooding, cold snaps, wildfires, biodiversity loss and other climate-related catastrophes all have the potential to massively disrupt supply chains of healthy food, clean water and other essentials needed to sustain life. In our complex, globalised society, this will affect people of any age and ability, but again it is the older population who face a heightened risk due to the higher likelihood of complex health needs.
Furthermore, evidence suggests that climate change will fuel the spread of infectious diseases to once temperate areas. A warmer, wetter climate is, for example, more accommodating to tropical diseases currently unseen in the UK, including the mosquito-borne West Nile, Dengue and Chikungunya viruses, all of which pose a risk to those whose bodies are less able to repel infection. Hotter summers, like the one we saw in 2022, also increase the risk of wildfires – an issue that has become increasingly common in Wales, where broad expanses of countryside are covered in open grassland. As well as the obvious hazard, wildfires also contribute to the deterioration of air quality, posing a risk to a rural population that is increasingly older and more isolated.
Lastly, an ageing population requires a greater use of health and social care services, both of which are vulnerable to climate-based shocks. One increasingly common example across the UK is disruption to transport networks from flooding and landslips, which restricts the ability of people to access healthcare (including interrupting at-home care) and can slow down emergency services. As in the case of food and water, climate-based disruptions to supply chains can also limit the availability of medicines and medical equipment, further impacting upon those with complex health conditions and disabilities.
These are just some of many examples of how climate change poses a direct threat to an ageing population. As stated above, these suggestions are limited to a UK context, where the predicted effects of climate change will be, at least for now, relatively mild compared to much of the rest of the world (Gary Haq covers the broader picture of how an ageing population interacts with a more extreme climate in his 2023 article in The Conversation). Nonetheless, even these limited examples illustrate the social risk posed by the oncoming – and unstoppable – clash of two critical trajectories.
A human crisis
What does all this tell us? It’s a rather bleak picture, certainly, and one that would sober even the most diehard intergenerational warrior. But more importantly it shows us that the climate crisis is, and will be, a profoundly human crisis. As the population gets older and the climate gets more turbulent, we will see climate change played out as a human tragedy – including within the complex health and social care systems of the Global North.
This has the potential to radically alter how we interpret climate change. By rethinking resilience to an extreme climate as a matter of immediate human wellbeing – particularly that of the most vulnerable people in society – it may be possible to push serious structural changes onto the political agenda. These might include reducing the complexity of supply lines, revitalising public transport and comprehensively updating our antiquated housing stock. Reimagining the fight for climate stability as a fight for human life may also draw climate debates away from some of the darker suggestions that are bandied around by supposedly serious commentators, like calls for a global population reduction – an idea that has been comprehensively debunked as both mathematically ineffectual and, more importantly, utterly inhuman.
Humanising the climate crisis by focusing on its harmful impact on older people may also help to break down the barriers to climate action. Climate activism still struggles to cut through social boundaries: in the UK, climate activism is often (fairly or unfairly) stereotyped as a pursuit for young, middle-class, university-educated people. By highlighting the impact that even a slight temperature increase will have on large swathes of the population, it may be possible to mobilise a broader cohort to action. Extinction Rebellion’s antics may not be to everyone’s liking, but no one wants their grandparents to catch Dengue fever.
The intersection between climate change and an ageing population is not a pretty picture, but every crisis has the potential to generate change. As more dramatic weather begins to disrupt the wealthier – and more complacent – nations, climate change will inevitably take on a more human dimension, starting with our older people. Perhaps the growing social emergency will cut through the complacency, forging a new consensus around socially motivated climate action. Perhaps not. At the very least, it will remind us that the climate crisis is ultimately a human crisis too.
