Climate change is going to kill us, but will we care?
Over the weekend I read a paper by a large group of scientists on the impact of climate change on mortality rates (yes, that is what I like to do on the weekend…). In it, they use regional and even more granular mortality data from 40 countries to estimate how mortality rates will change between today and 2100.
All their simulations are based on the RCP8.5 scenario with Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 3. If all that sounds like gobbledygook to you, don’t worry. All you need to know about it is that recent research indicates that this is the pathway in terms of climate change that we have been on over the last 15 years and that we will continue to remain on if we don’t change our economies and our habits significantly. The chart below shows the anticipated change in mortality from climate change alone.
Expected change in mortality from climate change in 2100
Source: Carlton et al. (2020).
If you live in Canada, the UK, Scandinavia, Germany, or even Northern Australia, you don’t have to worry. Because climate change means that there are fewer extremely cold days in your area. And because you live in a rich country where people can afford proper heating, insulation, and air conditioning, mortality if anything is going to decline from today’s levels. If you live in the US lower 48 or in China’s coastal regions, you also don’t have to worry too much. Mortality due to climate change is only going to increase by about 100 people per 100,000 citizens or a mere 0.1%. But if you live in Africa, the Middle East, or India, then, well, you are screwed. Mortality in these regions is likely to increase significantly.
The problem is that if you live in a region that is already beset by a hot climate today, the rapid increase in days with very high temperatures is going to have a dramatic health effect, particularly on older people and children under the age of 5. If on top of it, you are poor and cannot afford air conditioning and other adaptation measures, you are exposed to the elements without protection and face a significantly higher mortality rate.
By splitting up increases in mortality rates from climate change and adaptation costs by the temperature of a region today, we see that cooler places like Oslo can avoid an increase in mortality by investing in adaptation technologies. However, once you move the other 40% hottest places on Earth (in the chart the cities to the right of Sao Paolo), adaptation is not going to prevent mortality rates from rising.
Left: Increase in deaths from climate change without adaptation, middle: Adaptation costs, Right: full mortality risk from climate change
Source: Carlton et al. (2020).
Averaging mortality rates across the globe leaves us with the scary prospect of climate change killing about as many people globally in 2100 as cancer or infectious diseases do today. The problem just is that deaths aren’t distributed equally. As the green bars show, high-income countries will feel almost no change in mortality rates, while low-income countries will suffer the most. And politically, these countries have no lobby. So yes, climate change will kill us. But I fear it will simply kill the wrong people. If we want people to wake up to climate change in countries like the United States, then the consequences should become salient to them. And I fear in terms of mortality, they just won’t.
Deaths from climate change in 2100 vs diseases in 2018
Source: Carlton et al. (2020).