Introduction
It is well known that nowadays, due to the destructive activity of human beings, climate change has become a burning issue. Thus, it may lead to global warming, which causes sewage contamination in cities, ozone air pollution, and wildfires (Patz, & Thomson, 2018). As a result, all these changes affect people’s health negatively. In this paper, two academic articles that discuss the problem of climate change and its impact on human health will be reviewed. The first article is written by a group of American scholars and called “Heat-related health impacts under scenarios of climate and population change.” The second article supports the ideas of the first work. It is called “Urgent action is needed to protect human health from the increasing effect of climate change.” The purpose of the review is to summarise and synthesize sources, describing how the articles are related to each other. The review will include the main ideas, goals, and problems discussed in the academic works. Also, the primary achievements and setbacks of research will be presented. In addition, lingering questions surrounding the topic will be considered.
Literature Review
There are numerous research papers that aim to investigate the potential threat of climate change for people. For instance, the authors of the work “Heat-related health impacts under scenarios of climate and population change” assert that climate change may affect human health negatively. They point out that global warming is the most dangerous consequence of climate change and consider extreme heat as the main problem that is raised in their research. The goal of the work is to estimate heat-related mortality in the USA as a key factor that determines the impact of global warming on people’s health (Morefield, Fann, Grambsch, Raich, & Weaver, 2018). The results demonstrate that climate change may cause approximately 3000-16,000 deaths a year.
Similarly, the article “Urgent action is needed to protect human health from the increasing effect of climate change” discusses health problems that people may experience due to climate change. The authors support the ideas described in the article mentioned above and further explore the health issues that human beings are likely to face due to the increase in temperature. These issues include infectious diseases, cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory illnesses, undernutrition, and even death (Hobbhann, Fears, Haines, & Meulen, 2019). While the goal of the first article was to estimate mortality, the second work aims to pay attention of the world community to the problem and suggest ways to resolve it. Thus, the authors point out that a phase-out of fossil fuels and control of emissions from agriculture and households will avoid about 3,6 million premature deaths a year (Hobbhann et al., 2019). The authors continue their work by highlighting the importance of raising awareness of climate change effects on people’s health.
The described articles are directly related to each other as they discuss the same issues and raise similar problems. Moreover, the articles can serve as supplements to each other. Thus, the first article contains information on the negative effect of global warming on people’s health, while the second article continues the narration on the same topic. It describes the health issues in a detailed way and suggests possible ways to deal with the problem and save the lives of millions of human beings.
It is also necessary to highlight the main achievements and setbacks of the reviewed articles. The primary achievement of the authors of both articles is that the information provided in the works raise the awareness of the world community about the causes of climate change. Also, the data presented in research is clear and precise, as it contains not only qualitative but quantitative evidence, which makes the narrations convincing. In addition, the content of the second article is especially valuable as it discusses possible solutions to the described problem. Unfortunately, the first article does not provide any suggestions on how to improve the current situation, which can be considered as its primary setback. Reviewing the articles’ setbacks, it can be concluded that they both focus on physical health issues, underestimating the impact of climate change on humans’ mental well-being. However, it is fair to notice that the impact of global warming on the mental health of people is briefly mentioned in the second article.
The lingering questions of the described topic are how to control climate change and what should be done to avoid its negative consequences. Indeed, many researchers, engineers, and environmentalists have been expressing deep concerns about climate change since the second half of the twentieth century (Shahzad, 2015). However, there are still no methods invented to stop the process of global warming entirely. Unfortunately, the main reason for that is the reluctance of humans to stop destructive activity and ignorance of some individuals about the consequences of climate change.
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that the reviewed articles are correlated, describe similar ideas, and serve as supplements to each other. In general, these works are excellent sources that raise global awareness of the negative consequences of climate change. However, there are some gaps in the research, such as lack of information on mental issues caused by global warming. Nevertheless, these articles can still be recommended for reading to both youth and adults as it helps people to realize the scope of the disaster caused by their destructive activities.
References
Hobbhann, N., Fears, R., Haines, A., & Meulen,V. (2019). Urgent action is needed to protect human health from the increasing effects of climate change. The Lancet Planetary Health, 3(8), e333–e335.
Morefield, E. P., Fann, N., Grambsch, A., Raich, W., & Weaver, C. (2018). Heat-related health impacts under scenarios of climate and population change. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15(11). Web.
Patz, J. A., & Thomson, M. (2018). Climate change and health: Moving from theory to practice. PLOS Medicine, 15(7). Web.
Shahzad, U. (2015). Global warming: Causes, effects and solutions. Durreesamin Journal, 1(4). Web.