In the NewsPress Trust of India November 5, 2019

Odisha may witness 42,000 more deaths annually by 2100 due to extreme heat: Study

Odisha may witness 42,334 more deaths every year due to extreme heat by 2100, a new study study has said. It will be almost five times more than the total deaths the state records due to cardiac arrest every year. The spike in average summer temperature and number of extremely hot days has an impact on mortality, the study revealed. Michael Greenstone, faculty director at the Tata Centre for Development at UChicago and a co-founder of the Climate Impact Lab said, "Reliance on fossil fuels globally will greatly harm the well-being of people in the coming years and decades. Managing climate and air pollution risks is perhaps the challenges of our generation." The impact of carbon emissions is going to be more pronounced on societies across the globe, including India, which has already seen 2,500 deaths due to a heat wave in 2015, said Amir Jina, assistant professor at the Harris Public Policy and researcher at the Climate Impact Lab. "The future will be more worrying if a course correction is not embarked upon at the earliest and investments are not made towards mitigating the harmful effects of climate change," Jina said.