https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-climate-rollbacks-heat-deaths
"New advances in environmental science are providing a detailed understanding
of the human costs of the Trump administration’s approach to climate change.
Increasing temperatures are already killing enormous numbers of people. A
ProPublica and
Guardian analysis that draws on sophisticated modeling by
independent researchers found that President Donald Trump’s “America First”
agenda of expanding fossil fuels and decimating efforts to reduce emissions
will add substantially to that toll, with the vast majority of deaths occurring
outside the United States.
Most of the people expected to die from soaring temperatures in the coming
decades live in poor, hot countries in Africa and South Asia, according to
recent research. Many of these countries emitted relatively little of the
pollution that causes climate change — and are least prepared to cope with the
increasing heat.
ProPublica and the
Guardian’s analysis shows that extra greenhouse gases
released in the next decade as a result of Trump’s policies are expected to
lead to as many as 1.3 million more temperature-related deaths worldwide in the
80 years after 2035. The actual number of people who die from heat will be much
higher, but a warming planet will also result in fewer deaths from cold.
Leaders from most of the world’s countries are now gathered at an international
conference in Belém, Brazil, to address the escalating effects of climate
change. The absence of the United States, which has 4% of the world’s
population but has produced 20% of its greenhouse gases, has been pointedly
noted by participants. Afghanistan, Myanmar and San Marino are the only other
nations that did not send a delegation to the meeting, according to a
provisional list of participants.
Our calculations use modeled estimates of the additional emissions that will be
released as a result of Trump’s policies as well as a peer-reviewed metric for
what is known as the mortality cost of carbon. That metric, which builds on
Nobel Prize-winning science that has informed federal policy for more than a
decade, predicts the number of temperature-related deaths from additional
emissions. The estimate reflects deaths from heat-related causes, such as heat
stroke and the exacerbation of existing illnesses, minus lives saved by reduced
exposure to cold. It does not include the massive number of deaths expected
from the broader effects of climate change, such as droughts, floods, wars,
vector-borne diseases, hurricanes, wildfires and reduced crop yields.
The numbers, while large, are just a fraction of the estimated 83 million
temperature-related deaths that could result from all human-caused emissions
over the same period if climate-warming pollution is not curtailed. But they
speak to the human cost of prioritizing U.S. corporate interests over the lives
of people around the globe."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
