Death By a Thousand Degrees
And other good news you haven't heard.
Unless you've been living in an igloo for the last 20 years, you're probably aware of the existential crisis all humans of the world are grappling with, - namely “Climate Change”. During the summer months it's impossible to turn on the radio or go online without hearing news of soaring, record-breaking temperatures, melting ice caps, and other dire predictions of our imminent demise.
No wonder our collective population is in such a bad mood.
Thankfully we have our saviour in the form of the IPCC. The IPCC (in case you don't know) is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Here's a brief description of who they are and what they do:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an organization set up by governments, run by governments, funded by governments, and with scientists appointed by governments, whose main purpose is to provide governments with policies relating to climate change. Of course many of these policies involve taxation and restrictions of the people currently enjoying this climate because hey - it's governmental.
Now, knowing that governments are always on the lookout for our best interests, you can rest assured that there are absolutely no conflicts of interest here whatsoever…
There was a very in-depth study published in The Lancet in July of 2021 that explained in great detail, and even in a somewhat readable fashion (for those of us without a bunch of letters after our names) the effect of “non-optimal ambient temperatures” on people's lives. More specifically, the study focused on the number of people who die every year on account of these non-optimal ambient temperatures.
The study looked at 750 locations in 43 countries from the years 2000 to 2019. So, these are the hot years.
I think it's pretty cool to see this kind of a study because aside from all the most common arguments - you know, CO2 levels, GHGs, Deniers, siccing your favourite expert on your friends, and all the rest - aside from all of these, isn't the most important thing here the lives of actual people?
I certainly hope so. I mean, we are in an existential crisis, are we not?
So, in this study, the researchers discovered that globally, there is an average of 5,083,173 deaths each and every year due to non-optimal ambient temperatures. These are temperatures that are generally considered “uncomfortable” by most people. That's a lot of deaths. In fact, it amounts to 9.43% of all deaths according to the study.
As we all know, we're living in a warming world and so the majority of these over five million deaths are surely due to the extreme heat we've been hearing about, right? Well, it turns out this study found that we probably don't know quite as much as we think we do. At least not if all our information comes from our favourite nightly newscast.
What the study found (and this is surely an earth-shattering discovery worthy of being trumpeted across every form of media) was that the number of people who died from heat related causes was around 500,000 people. Well that's a lot of people for sure. But that leaves about 4.5 million people who die of cold related causes each and every year. Yup. 4.5 MILLION DEATHS. Every year. From COLD.
Now, you really have to wonder what in the world are we doing about these 8.5% of all deaths that are attributable to cold weather? Well, let me tell you. For starters, we're taxing anything to do with fossil fuels, even though fossil fuels just happen to be the single most important tool we have to keep these people warm in the winter. So, there's that. Then, we're also promoting technology that is way more expensive and not nearly as reliable or efficient as the fossil fuels that poor people can barely afford as it is. I'm sure there's other stuff we’re doing as well, but so far it's not a great start.
As always there is good news! This is the news that you might expect to be proclaimed far and wide from every tall building and mountaintop. I wouldn't expect it, but you might.
Over the last 20 years, heat related deaths have increased a little bit. Sorry, that's not actually the good news, but it's the news that gets the trumpet. Actually it's a little bit good because we've discovered that people have actually adapted to the increase in temperature. That's gotta be a shocker. But the really good news is that cold related deaths have actually declined by much more, bringing the total number of deaths down. I wonder, is this a result of all our combined global efforts to combat climate change? One would think it’s not likely, although I'm sure politicians the world over would love to claim at least some responsibility for it, assuming they are even aware of it.
Now, you may wonder why we're not hearing about this great news - that as the world warms, there are fewer deaths due to these non-optimal temperatures. Again, I don't wonder at all, but you might.
In light of this ground-breaking study, I can only imagine what a relief this must be to every human on the planet who dreams of making it through one more winter. Too bad most of them haven't heard about it.
Here's some more good news: maybe if we can just get that extra 2.5°C on a global scale, we might not have to do anything at all to cut that death toll in half.
So we could have our cake and eat it too. Now wouldn't that be a treat?
Yes, making voters feel good is a great strategy for re-election, regardless of truth.
The difference between smoking cigarettes and global warming is that we really can do something about the smoking - if we want to. But it's a personal choice.
In the case of the climate, I think we've proven by now that there is nothing we can do about it, short of turning off our electricity and parking our cars permanently (and even that is debatable), and so we blame corporations and tax irresponsible citizens. And yes, that does make certain people feel good, for some reason and so if you're a government seeking re-election, it's a worthwhile endeavor in that sense.
The issue of climate change is not about people suffering heat stroke, it’s about ecosystems. Whether we like to admit it or not, we depend on ecosystems for survival. It’s like when a child takes a toy apart, or a bicycle, and doesn’t know how to put it back together again. It’s such an important lesson for a kid to learn that it’s even worth losing a toy or an old bike for them to understand. The climate is different though because we only have one. If it’s broken and we can’t fix it, that’s a very very costly mistake, and we won’t be the ones to suffer from it, future generations will. We have all the experts telling us in no uncertain terms that we need to stop doing what we’re doing because we don’t know what the results will be or whether we can fix them. Maybe we CAN fix it, and everything will be fine. I hope so! But we shouldn’t be taking that bet just because we ‘don’t like gubments’ or something like that.