Hello!
It’s often said that children are the future. But are we giving them a safe, clean and healthy one?
Today’s focus looks at a United Nations report that found that almost all of the world's children are exposed to at least one climate hazard, with as many as 1.8 billion put in danger by droughts and 1.2 billion by extreme heat.
Plus, the Ethical Corp Magazine showed that children are bearing the brunt of fracking health risks in the United States' push to “drill, baby, drill” as an oil company in Arlington, Texas, received permits to add nine new gas wells at two sites, as close as a third of a mile away from several primary and secondary schools.
Let’s start with the report from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) that said children were "disproportionately affected" by a range of intensifying climate-related risks and governments urgently needed to invest in infrastructure, adaptation and disaster management capabilities to reduce their exposure.
"It's not just the exposure to the single hazards like floods or droughts or heat waves and extreme heat that children face, but it is the exposure to multiple hazards," said Rohini Sampoornam Swaminathan, UNICEF statistics manager and one of the authors of the report.
As many as 662 million children were at risk from tropical storms, 337 million from riverine floods and 33 million from coastal floods, with 1 billion children also exposed to malaria, mostly in Africa.
In 2024, 242 million children in 85 countries saw their schooling disrupted by climate hazards. Click here for more on the report.
Elsewhere, Terry Slavin, editor-in-chief of Reuters Events Sustainable Business and Ethical Corporation Magazine, spoke to Arlington climate campaigners who found that TotalEnergies E&P Barnett USA (TEEP Barnett) sites had 85 methane pollution events over six months.
She spoke to Ranjana Bhandari, who leads community group Liveable Arlington, which lobbied the City of Arlington to turn down TEEP Barnett’s latest permit near the schools.
While no causal link has been established between fracking and health harms, Bhandari cites a 2022 Yale study that found Pennsylvania children living within 1.2 miles (2 km) of fracking sites at birth were two to three times more likely to develop acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
She also notes that the new 10-well Maverick pad is about 1,000 feet from Mother’s Heart daycare, while another four-well pad already operates roughly 600 feet from the school.
TotalEnergies denies adverse impacts of its operations, and underlines leadership on methane emissions reduction.
This is an incredibly eye-opening story and I urge you to click here and read Terry’s piece.
