Climate change is also harmful to health
Extreme heat, an earlier pollen season, more tropical infectious diseases: in many European countries, the number of heat-related deaths is rising.
From 52 deaths per million inhabitants in 2015 to more than 122 deaths per million people in Spain, Italy, Greece, Germany and Bulgaria. The study on this topic by Heidelberg University Hospital has now been published in the specialist journal “The Lancet” (Lancet Countdown Europe Report 2026).
The number of heat-related deaths has roughly tripled across Europe over the last ten years.
Yet there are also positive developments: over the same period, the share of renewable energy in total energy consumption in the EU has also tripled. And now the current energy crisis in the Strait of Hormuz is further driving global climate action.
At the Climate Dialogue in Berlin, almost all participants, including German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider, are calling for a move away from fossil fuels. Schneider said in Berlin: “Those who are dependent on fossil fuels face undeniable risks.” And: “Delaying the transition entails enormous costs.” However, this is also a warning to his own government in Berlin, where Economy Minister Katherina Reiche, in particular, is delaying and sidelining the expansion of renewables.
Why has this federal government learnt nothing from the oil price crisis of the 1970s?
Photo: Volker Wiciok / Jimmy Carter and Franz Alt in Bochum in 2012. Jimmy Carter served as the 39th US President from 1977 to 1981. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Back then, there was a Sunday driving ban for cars, a speed limit even in Germany, and then a rapidly growing environmental movement and the founding of green parties almost all over the world. The then US President Jimmy Carter had a solar panel system installed on the White House, which, as Jimmy Carter once told me, his successor Ronald Reagan had just as symbolically removed.
Germanwatch Chairman Christoph Balz, now in Berlin: The oil price crisis of the 1970s ensured that CO2 emissions fell sharply in the EU. “We must also seize the momentum in the current crisis.”
Had we maintained the pace of the 1970s to this day, we would have long since reached 100 per cent renewable energy. We would have fewer problems, greater security and freedom, cheaper energy, less anger at the petrol stations, a better future for our children and grandchildren, and better health for everyone. Yet it is not too late to reap all these benefits. We can still recognise and seize the opportunity presented by today’s crisis. We don’t even need the Strait of Hormuz for that.
