COP29: Climate change could kill millions, world leaders must work to limit deaths

The COP29 climate change conference has concluded, but as usual, it looks like little will happen.

The most urgent thing the United Nations can do is point out that “extreme weather events are affecting people around the world.” It is unlikely that a flurry of national policy actions will follow COP29. The results, while not substantive, are unlikely to result in significant change.

Some may think that a 2°C temperature increase is not such a bad thing. You might think that a slightly warmer world might be better, or that climate change will only affect other regions. This is a gravely false belief and grossly underestimates the era of global death and human misery that is coming with little abatement from climate change.

Lukewarm calls for change are unlikely to find a way to invest the “trillions of dollars needed for countries to significantly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.”

The conventional climate change debate has failed. Understanding the actual human deaths caused by carbon emissions can help drive change in climate policy.

Contextualizing climate change mortality

A recent study that reviewed more than 180 peer-reviewed papers, conducted with fellow researcher Richard Pearnkat, found that unless serious action is taken to reduce emissions, climate change will continue to increase by the end of the century. It was found that this could lead to approximately 1 billion premature deaths.

The basis for this estimate is called the 1,000 ton rule.

The 1,000 ton rule states that one person will die for every 1,000 ton of fossil carbon burned by humans. A 2 degree rise in temperature is equivalent to about 1 billion premature deaths over the next century. These people will be killed as a result of various climate changes related to global warming. The 2 C carbon budget due to anthropogenic global warming is approximately 1 trillion tons.

These findings come from a review of the climate literature that attempts to quantify future human mortality from a long list of mechanisms. This is a startling prediction about human suffering, however unpleasant, but it is consistent with diverse evidence and arguments from multiple disciplines.

The old scientific way of communicating about climate change just doesn’t work.

Policymakers and scientists have a hard time explaining even relatively basic concepts like climate forcing, how big a terawatt is, and what exactly is a ton of carbon dioxide.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that most people are ignorant. It’s just that these ideas are often too abstract to have any real meaning to most people.

But I can understand the corpse. The 1,000 ton rule has the potential to serve as a simple, inspiring, and easily tracked framework for understanding the impacts of global carbon emissions from a human perspective.

In other words, focusing on the number of people dying, rather than just the amount of carbon dioxide emitted, could more effectively galvanize efforts to reduce emissions.

Death toll due to climate change

Human-induced climate change has already begun killing humans and non-humans alike (directly and indirectly).

The heat wave has already caused thousands of deaths and even threatens the health of unborn children due to the combination of heat and humidity.

On the other hand, crop failures, droughts, floods, extreme weather events, wildfires, and rising sea levels due to rising temperatures are also very deadly to humans. Crop failures in particular can exacerbate global famine and famine, killing large numbers of people.

More frequent and severe droughts could lead to more wildfires. Wildfires, as recently witnessed in Hawaii, are extremely dangerous to both life and property.

Drought can also lead to water contamination, more frequent illness and deaths from dehydration. On the other hand, climate change can also cause flooding (and crop loss), which in turn can lead to hunger and disease.

Sea level rise (and the resulting submergence of low-lying coastal areas) caused by climate change threatens billions of lives. Climate change will also increase extreme weather events, disrupting essential services such as power grids and medical facilities, causing significant damage.

In addition to all this, there is also evidence to suggest that climate change indirectly increases the likelihood of conflict and war. While there is still no academic consensus regarding wars caused by climate change, there is little doubt that climate change can amplify stress and lead to more localized conflicts.

prevent future deaths

If we don’t change course, climate change will continue to kill one person every three to four seconds and could cause as many as 1 billion premature deaths by the end of this century. Again, the number of deaths is not evenly distributed around the world.

It is important that policy makers begin to consider the number of premature deaths expected from the emissions that may result from their decisions.

Knowing how many people will be killed by a decision to open a new coal or natural gas plant would be a powerful push toward greener solutions. Conversely, knowing that a decision to invest in a zero-carbon solution could potentially save thousands of lives will further encourage carbon-friendly decision-making.

As world leaders decide how to follow up on COP29, they should remember that their decisions are directly responsible for the loss of real lives. Perhaps the numbers could be staggering enough for policymakers to intervene.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.