In 2002 the World Health Organization reported that, “Climate change was estimated to be responsible in 2000 for approximately 2.4% of worldwide diarrhoea, 6% of malaria in some middle income countries and 7% of dengue fever in some industrialized countries. In total, the attributable mortality was 154 000 (0.3%) deaths …” For the sake of discussion lets assume that this number is not only correct, but that each of the 154,000 deaths are the consequence of climate changes resulting from greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere.

Now consider an editorial in The New York Times from earlier this week,

“Throughout the continent of Africa, thousands of people die needlessly every day from diseases like AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. One hundred years ago, before we had the medical know-how to eradicate these illnesses, this might have been acceptable. But we are the first generation able to afford to end poverty and the diseases it spawns. It’s past time we step up to the plate. We are all responsible for choosing to view the tsunami victims in Southeast Asia as more deserving of our help than the malaria victims in Africa. Jeffrey Sachs, the economist who heads the United Nations’ Millennium Development Project to end global poverty, rightly takes issue with the press in his book “The End of Poverty”: “Every morning,” Mr. Sachs writes, “our newspapers could report, ‘More than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty.’ ” So, on this page, we’d like to make a first step. Yesterday, more than 20,000 people perished of extreme poverty.”

At 20,000 deaths per day, this equates to 7,300,000 deaths per year. So the ratio of poverty deaths to putative climate change deaths is about 50 to 1.

Does this mean that we should not worry about climate change? No.
Does this mean that we should emit greenhouse gases with reckless abandon? No.

What it does mean is that efforts to justify greenhouse gas mitigation policies on preventing human impacts run up against the reality that if it is human lives that you really care about, then there are obvious, straightforward and comparatively inexpensive ways to reduce human death and suffering that do not involve first reordering the global energy system.

Further, reducing greenhouse gases, per se, will do little or nothing to address the 7.3 million deaths from poverty each year, but addressing the conditions that lead to those 7.3 million deaths has the side benefit of also addressing those very same contributing factors that lead to the 0.15 million deaths attributed to climate change.

From this perspective, adaptation to climate change by focusing on reducing societal vulnerability to climate-related impacts deserves a much more prominent role in discussion of climate change. At the same time, advocates of climate mitigation should think carefully about the use of human death and suffering as a justification for adoption of greenhouse gas emissions — the numbers don’t make a strong case.

For further reading:

Sarewitz, D., and R.A. Pielke, Jr., 2005. Rising Tide, The New Republic, January 6. (PDF)