Refugees and displaced people, often living in precarious physical and political conditions, are among the hardest hit by the climate crisis despite contributing little to its causes. In May 2024, catastrophic flooding in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul killed 181 people, causing billions of dollars of damage. The floods displaced 580,000 people, including 43,000 vulnerable refugees from Venezuela, Haiti and Cuba, who were living in some of the most flood-affected areas in the region, according to UNHCR. A year earlier, Cyclone Mocha – the most destructive storm to hit Myanmar in years – made landfall in Rakhine state where 160,000 ethnic Rohingya have been living in overcrowded camps since 2012. “We had very little to begin with,” Ma Phyu Ma, 37, an internally displaced Rohingya told UN researchers. “The hut was our shelter. The boat and nets allowed us to fish. The clothes were my source of income. It is painful for me to lose everything.” In 2024, a third of all emergencies declared by UNHCR involved floods, drought, wildfires and other extreme weather events affecting people displaced by war......read on   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/09/climate-disasters-displaced-250-million-people-in-past-10-years-un-report-finds

12-15-2025*******HEALTHAround a decade ago, the US implemented new rules to limit the widespread use of antibiotics in meat and dairy production in an effort to combat the nation’s antibiotic resistance crisis. VOX Future Perfect 12-11-2025The regulations helped; antibiotic sales for use on farms plunged by 43 percent from 2015 to 2017 and plateaued thereafter. But now, that progress appears to be backsliding. According to recently published data from the Food and Drug Administration, sales of antibiotics for use in livestock surged by an alarming 15.8 percent in 2024 from the previous year. The sudden increase worries the scientists I spoke with who track the issue.  “It’s disappointing to see such a substantial increase,” Meghan Davis, a veterinarian and associate professor of environmental health and engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told me over email. “Antimicrobial use in food-producing animals matters for human health.”

Antibiotics are a bedrock of modern medicine, used to treat common bacterial infections from strep throat to urinary tract infections to E.coli, and they’re a major reason why common infections are generally no longer extremely dangerous in the modern world. According to one estimate, antibiotics have increased average human life expectancy by over 20 years since the early 20th century.   But in the US and around the globe, most antibiotics aren’t used in human medicine, and instead are fed to farmed animals as a means to prevent and treat illness in unhygienic, overcrowded factory farms where disease is prevalent and spreads quickly. 

The meat industry’s dependence on antibiotics has, in turn, contributed to the rise of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotic treatment. When someone becomes infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, also known as “superbugs,” certain antibiotics are less effective — or entirely ineffective — making common infections harder to treat. The World Health Organization considers antimicrobial resistance to be “one of the top global public health and development threats.” In 2019, it was responsible for an estimated 1.27 million deaths globally, with 35,000 of them in the US — and 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur in the US each year. For a time, the US demonstrated it could make progress on the antibiotic resistance problem. Ten years ago, the livestock industry was even voluntarily pledging to reduce antibiotic use. But now that all appears to have been lip service — and regulators are doing little to rein in the industry’s overuse.......read on    https://gnnhd.tv/news/52873/the-alarming-rise-in-antibiotic-use-by-the-meat-industry

New Report Highlights Detrimental Impact of Climate Change on Human Health EARTH.ORG Colin RhodesJan 23rd 2025 10 of 15 indicators monitoring health hazards, exposures and impacts have reached record levels, according to the latest Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change report. These impacts disproportionately fall on the 745 million people who lack access to electricity and have contributed the least to climate change. Record fossil fuel subsidies, production, and increasing global energy demand are pushing emissions to levels that will further endanger human health. “The 2024 report reveals the most concerning findings yet in 8 years of monitoring” – 2024 Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change has been produced each year since 2015 by a collaboration of 300 researchers and health professionals from UN agencies and global academic institutions. The central aim of the report is to evaluate the connections between climate change and health at global, regional, and national levels. The most recent report, published in October 2024, analyzes linkages between climate change and health across 56 indicators.

Wildfires.....The catastrophic, ongoing wildfires in the Los Angeles area have caused 24 deaths and destroyed more than 12,000 structures as of this writing. This is the latest example of an overall global increase in wildfire frequency and severity. The risk of wildfires and human exposure to very high fire danger increased in 124 countries between 2003-2007 and 2019-2023 due to higher temperatures and more frequent droughts.   Wildfire smoke contains several pollutants including particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) that are a significant threat to human health, including exacerbating respiratory illnesses and reducing lung and cardiovascular function. Research has also found that even short-term exposure to wildfire-related PM2.5 is associated with an increased risk of mortality.

How do you rebuild all this?’ Black River residents assess damage after Hurricane Melissa Guardian Natricia Duncan in St Elizabeth  Fri 31 Oct 2025 People of Jamaican coastal town described as storm’s ground zero are traumatised and desperate for help. It is a treacherous journey to Black River, a coastal town in Jamaica’s southwestern parish of St Elizabeth, which this week bore the brunt of Hurricane Melissa As you get closer to Black River, which has been described as ground zero for the category 5 hurricane’s impact, it becomes clear that almost every house and building has lost its roof. The town centre has been annihilated and now resembles a demolition site.