Member-only story
Featured
How Much Fossil Fuel Must Burn to Cause a Future Human Death?
Life is the ultimate unit of value — fossil fuels, the ultimate silent killer
In the early 2000s, while politicians buried their heads in climate sand, Australian epidemiologist Anthony McMichael dared to ask and then quantify the deadly impact: How many people were being killed by climate change?
His team cut through the fog of denialism, tallying up deaths from diarrheal disease, malnutrition, malaria, cardiovascular issues (a stand-in for heat-related illness), and flooding. Eventually, they fingered climate change for a grim toll of 166,000 lives during 2000.
Fast forward to now. Yes, denialism and even political negligence has a parasitic orange face spreading around the world as temperatures keep rising. But in the meantime, climate science has flourished (even though these days feel like the opposite, I know) bringing comprehensive data on how climate chaos affects everything, from the mundane to the escalating climate events.
Yet despite the undeniable urgency, assessing how many people are currently being killed by the climate crisis has remained conspicuously stagnant, and the McMichael standard stands alone. And incomplete.
