ABC News Excerpt: Marina Romanello, a professor at University College London and the executive director of the Lancet Countdown: "These numbers point to a clear emergency," Romanello said in a statement. "The rate of increase in many climate-related health threats is accelerating, while heat deaths linked to climate change have reached a record-high, and the economic toll is battering vulnerable sectors and communities the hardest." ...

"The threats to people's health and people's survival have reached unprecedented levels, with many of these threats and impacts even accelerating in the last decade with respect to the previous one," Romanello said.

[The report authors say] the WHO and United Nations should use their existing resources to respond to the challenges, and they recommend that the WHO create a new way to formally recognize climate change as a health emergency and coordinate a global response. They also suggest making health and well-being core objectives and measures of success in all climate action. ... 

The authors say countries and global institutions need to make climate and health a top priority and they call for cutting greenhouse gas emissions quickly and fairly to protect people's health. In addition, the researchers recommend creating a shared pool of climate and health data that everyone can use and having wealthier countries provide more grants and low-interest loans. ...

"We have not really managed to tackle climate change 10 years after the Paris Agreement, and we're seeing these escalating health harms that have made climate change now a very severe, very grave global health emergency that requires an urgent emergency response to be adequately addressed," Romanello said.