11 local story ideas from the 2025 Lancet Countdown

The ninth annual Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change report warns of accelerating health threats, from heat deaths to wildfire smoke, and highlights policy backsliding, including U.S. withdrawal from major climate agreements.

It’s a world in turmoil, according to the report, representing the work of 128 experts from 71 institutions, and the most comprehensive report to date. For the past several years, the Lancet medical journal has been publishing an in-depth annual report tracking the impact of climate change on global health.

The 2025 Lancet report marks 2024 as the first year during which global temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above those of pre-industrial times. Greenhouse gas emissions also rose to record levels in 2024.

This shift is driving rising heat deaths, worsening air quality, expanding disease risks, and mounting economic losses.

The report monitors 57 metrics, including heat-related deaths, bank lending, fossil fuels and media engagement. Of the 20 metrics that assess climate change and health actions, 12 moved in the wrong direction in the past year and six showed a reversal of previous progress.

It’s important for journalists to pay attention to the report because it connects global warming to concrete, measurable harms already unfolding in communities across the world and the U.S.

These are stories about public health, infrastructure, equity and policy.

“It’s about health, but it’s also about people’s livelihood and economic security, says Dr. Jeremy Hess, one of the Lancet report’s co-authors, an emergency physician and the lead for the report’s adaptation working group. “And increasingly in the U.S., we’re starting to see that the people who are bearing climate risk are not the people who created the problem, and they are seeing increasing burdens, unfortunately, and entirely because of choices made, mostly at the federal level.”

To help journalists localize coverage of this year’s report, we’re sharing several story ideas.

The 2025 Lancet Countdown report arrives at a time when the U.S has begun rolling back climate policies and deprioritizing climate actions.

Under the Trump administration, the U.S. has withdrawn from the 2015 Paris Agreement, a global climate change treaty adopted by nearly every country in the world. The administration has also dismantled research in the field. The National Heat Strategy introduced during the Biden administration in 2024 is no more. And, no high-ranking U.S. official attended this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP30, in Brazil.

Unlike in previous years, the U.S. does not have an in-depth policy brief in this year’s Lancet report. The report does offer a two-page U.S. data sheet, which has been published in previous years, in addition to the policy briefs.

The lack of an in-depth analysis this year isn’t because U.S. researchers involved in the report aren’t hard at work, Hess says. Rather, they’re working with fewer resources.

“A lot of resources have vanished, and the overall trajectory in the U.S. in terms of investment and mitigation has changed pretty substantially, too,” says Hess, a professor at the University of Washington and the director of the UW Center for Health and the Global Environment. “So, it’s taking a little bit longer for us to really get a sense of where we are and the health implications.”

Local story angles for journalists

The report uses the Human Development Index to compare countries. The HDI shows how well a country is doing in giving its people the opportunity to enjoy a decent standard of living. The measure was created by the United Nations Development Program, with the goal of shifting focus away from just economic growth, like GDP, toward people’s real lives.

1. Explore heat as a workplace safety story.

In 2024, each person in the U.S. was exposed to an average of 14.1 days of heatwave. Without climate change, 72% of those exposures would not have happened, according to the report.

Find out whether employers in your area provide shade, water and rest breaks, and whether state or local governments have enforceable heat standards.

Interviews with workers, unions, and occupational health experts can reveal how rising temperatures are changing job conditions, pay and health outcomes in specific industries.

Heat continues to be the most immediate and deadly consequence of climate change, with the report estimating 546,000 annual heat-related deaths globally — a 63% increase in heat-related deaths since the 1990s.

“Keep in mind that every heat-related death is preventable,” said Ollie Jay, a professor of heat and health at the University of Sydney, during an online press briefing in October about the launch of this year’s Lancet report. “So that’s another way of interpreting these data.”

2. Investigate how extreme weather affects worker productivity.

Increased exposure to events like extreme heat, wildfire smoke or other extreme weather events has health consequences. They can lead to injuries, disease and death, which can affect people’s livelihoods.

For example, outdoor workers “may not make as much money, or they’re more likely to be injured because heat exposure increases the likelihood of injury,” Hess says.

In 2024, heat exposure resulted in a loss of more than 3.5 billion potential work hours, 84% more than the annual average in the 1990s. About 45% of those hours were lost in the construction sector, according to the Lancet report.

3. Report how climate change affects insurance eligibility.

Studies and reports show that the frequency and severity of weather events, such as floods, hurricanes and wildfires, and the losses associated with them have affected property insurance and insurability.

“Insurance companies want to minimize exposure to these losses as much as possible,” Hess says. “So costs are going up, claim and coverage denials are going up, and all of that leads to, in some cases, really dramatic shifts in affordability and livelihood.”

In the U.S., the uncertainty and stress on insurance is resulting in substantial premium increases, with average rates rising by 33% between 2020 and 2023, and even more in areas at high risk. Flood insurance premiums have increased by some 500% in high-risk coastal regions, while premiums more than doubled in wildfire-exposed zones in California over the past decade, according to the report.

In 2023, global insured losses from natural catastrophes totaled $108 billion, marking the fourth consecutive year surpassing the $100 billion threshold. Total economic losses reached $280 billion, costs that were absorbed by individuals, businesses and governments.

The insurance protection gap is even wider in low- and medium-HDI countries: in Africa, for example, only about 7% of disaster losses are insured, compared with over 57% in North America, according to the report.

4. Map vulnerability of local communities.

The effects of climate change don’t fall evenly, and local data can show which neighborhoods face the highest risks.

Use publicly available heat, air quality or tree canopy maps to illustrate disparities tied to income, race and housing conditions.

While the report doesn’t offer U.S.-specific data, it compares the countries to highlight inequities.

For instance, while 48% of households in high- and very high-HDI countries had air conditioning in 2023, only 2% of households in low HDI countries had access, highlighting unequal access to technology crucial for protecting health from heat. Between 2012 and 2021, heat-related deaths were 1.7% of all deaths in low HDI countries, compared with 0.5% in very high HDI countries.

5. Explain the chronic threat of wildfire smoke.

In 2024, wildfire smoke was responsible for about 11,500 deaths in the U.S. That’s a 49% increase from the 2003-2012 average, according to the report. Of the 188 countries with available data, 117 (62%) had increased exposure to wildfire risk.

Some of the global hotspots for wildfires include California, the Pacific Northwest in the U.S. and Canada, Central Brazil and northern Argentina, northern Algeria and Morocco, and large parts of Mediterranean Europe.

Wildfire smoke sends fine particles deep into the lungs, worsening asthma, heart disease and other conditions.

Increasing wildfire smoke is now a recurring health issue far beyond the western U.S. Local news outlets can track patterns of school closures, emergency department visits and air-quality alerts tied to smoke days.

Talking to pediatricians, asthma specialists and families can help illustrate how smoke affects children, older adults and outdoor workers.

6. Look for trends in climate-driven diseases.

Shifts in temperature and precipitation are changing the timing and geographic spread of vector-borne diseases, which are human illnesses caused by parasites, viruses and bacteria that are transmitted by vectors such as mosquitoes.

Investigate whether your region is seeing earlier tick seasons, increased mosquito activity or new diseases appearing for the first time.

Interviews with local health departments, entomologists and hospital officials can help connect global disease trends to local risks and preparedness gaps.

Worldwide, the average potential transmission of dengue by mosquitoes increased by as much as 48.5% from 1951-1960 to 2015-2024, according to the Lancet report. This increase at least partially contributed to 7.6 million dengue cases reported globally in 2024.

An additional 364 million people worldwide were at risk of tick-borne diseases in 2015-2024 compared with the 1950s.

In addition, epidemiological studies have linked climate change — including air pollution and heat exposure — to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, cancers and other long-term chronic health conditions like asthma, said Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown, during the October press briefing.

Researchers study deaths caused by environmental exposures, such as death from an acute infection as a result of inflammation associated with air pollution, Romanello explained.

7. Investigate climate politics at the local level.

With the diminished interest among U.S. leadership, local governments and communities may be stepping in to fill leadership gaps.

Explore how cities, counties, tribes or states in your region are advancing — or rolling back — their own climate and health policies. This includes heat action plans, clean-energy investments, public-health funding and emergency response strategies.

“In the U.S., you have a lot of city governments that have actually been quite productive around climate change, and they tend to be, in many cases, the best source of information about climate change impacts,” Hess says.

Hess also advises journalists to investigate whether health is incorporated into local, regional or state climate information.

“Sometimes you find that somebody at the state level is concerned, but at a city level, the politics are just different, and they just don’t explore the health issue, or they won’t talk about it,” Hess says.

He added that in some cases, cities are taking action, but states are limiting their efforts to protect public health from climate-sensitive hazards.

Worldwide, local governments are taking action, according to the report. Nearly 97% of the cities that report to CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, declared having completed or intending to complete climate change risk assessments in 2024, according to the Lancet report.

8. Follow-up on existing reports.

Days before the Trump administration took office in January, the Biden administration introduced a National Adaptation and Resilience Planning Strategy, outlining specific steps and phases for identifying and implementing plans to adapt to climate change. An archived version of the report is available on the Department of State’s website.

“Explore what of the [Department of Health & Human Services’] planned actions outlined there are currently underway, as most of the risk assessment and risk reduction work mentioned have been discontinued,” Hess says.

National Adaptation Plans outline how countries will adapt to climate change in the medium- and long-term, according to the United Nations Development Program. A dozen developed countries, including the U.S., and 70 developing countries have submitted a National Adaptation Plan to the United Nations.

9. Report on local hospitals’ climate readiness.

Hospitals and clinics sit on the front lines of climate impacts but vary widely in their readiness.

Investigate whether local health systems have plans for weather emergencies, wildfire smoke surges or power outages.

Public health systems are increasingly absorbing the costs of uninsured climate damages, the authors of the Lancet report write. From heat waves and floods to disease outbreaks, health care infrastructure faces mounting pressure, yet insurance coverage remains minimal.

“Although data are limited, disasters such as Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and Cyclone Idai in Mozambique show how uninsured health care costs (including emergency care, hospital damage, and mental health services) are often absorbed by strained public systems, or go unaddressed altogether,” the report’s authors write.

This strain leaves health systems even more vulnerable to future climate impacts.

“I think this story will start to really be felt with sea level rise,” in coastal cities and low-lying areas that can get flooded, Hess says. “You have a pretty big problem around continuity of operations, exposure to these natural hazards that are increasing in frequency, and communities that rely on you for essential health care and public health services, and no real plan for managing the financial and other losses around these things.”

10. Investigate the impact on water and food security.

Local agriculture, food prices and water supplies are increasingly shaped by climate extremes.

Journalists can report on how drought, heat or floods are affecting farmers, school meal programs, grocery costs and food banks in their area.

Worldwide, the incidence of extreme rain days, which can trigger flash floods and landslides, increased in 64% of the global land surface between 1961-1990 and 2015-2024.

Also, a record-breaking 61% of the global land area was affected by extreme drought in 2024. That’s almost 300% above the 1950s average. This trend further threatens food and water security and sanitation.

“The extremes of heat, precipitation, and droughts can affect crop productivity, disrupt supply chains, hamper the work of agricultural workers, and affect income, further threatening food security,” the Lancet report authors write.

11. Look for positive actions toward curbing the effects of climate change.

There are some hopeful signs in this year’s report.

“We’ve seen real progress around adaptation planning globally,” says Hess. “I think there’s a lot more awareness around climate change health impacts that there used to be.”

The clean energy sector is growing, the report finds. The share of electricity generated by modern renewable sources of energy reached a record 12% in 2022. The sector accounted for 10% of global GDP growth in 2023, according to the Lancet report.

Direct and indirect employment in the renewable energy sector increased by 18.3% in 2023, reaching 16.2 million employees globally, providing healthier and more sustainable job opportunities.

Global clean energy investment grew by 8.7% in 2024 to $2.03 trillion, which is 69% higher than fossil fuel investment.

In addition, the clean energy sector is a significant economic driver, accounting for 10% of global GDP growth in 2023. This includes 6% of GDP growth in the U.S., nearly 5% in India, and over 30% in the EU.

Also, greenhouse gas emissions by the health sector fell by 12% between 2021 and 2022.

Climate change education for health professionals is also growing. In 2024, 64% of medical students globally received climate and health education in the surveyed institutions.

The shift away from coal resulted in a 5.8% reduction in deaths attributed to particulate matter from fossil fuels, saving 160,000 lives, according to the Lancet report.

“As a growing number of world leaders threaten to reverse the little progress to date, these incipient positive actions need to be reinforced and expanded for the world to continue to sustain healthy human lives,” the authors of the Lancet report write.