More than 1,000 people participating in the Hajj to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, have died as of Thursday as temperatures in the holy city reached 125°F at the Grand Mosque.

The tragedy serves as an example of how the climate crisis is making mass gatherings more dangerous, especially in warmer parts of the world. Saudi Arabia is heating 50% faster than the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, and by 2050, The Washington Post and Carbon Plan estimated that temperatures would rise high enough in Mecca to make it dangerous to be in the sun for 182 days a year.

“Words fail. Words fail,” the activist group Climate Defiance wrote on social media in response to the deaths.

“Stop it with your vapid odes to incrementalism. Stop it with your 2050 pledges,” the group added. “Humanity is barreling to the brink. Open your eyes!”

“For so many, religious rituals are a sacred and central part of their identities,” the group continued. “Now merely practicing a faith proves a literal death sentence.”

Mecca is the holiest city in the Islamic religious tradition, and making the Hajj, or pilgrimage, there is one of Islam’s Five Pillars. The Hajj always draws hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world, with more than 1.8 million registered pilgrims attending this year. The timing depends on the Islamic calendar, which follows a lunar cycle. In 2024, it fell between June 14 and June 19 in the Gregorian calendar, coinciding with Saudi Arabia’s hotter period.

“The Hajj is considered one of the Five Pillars of Islam, along with belief in Allah, prayer, fasting, and charity. It is intended to be a sacred part of life,” Climate Defiance wrote. “Due to profit-driven, fossil-fueled global hearing, it is now a part of death.”

At the close of this year’s pilgrimage, a total of 1,081 people were reported dead........

© Truthout