‘Weather porn’ hides the fact that disaster deaths are way down

Over the past decade, climate-related disasters have killed 98 per cent fewer people than a century ago. So, where’s the ‘crisis’?

By Bjorn Lomborg, National Post, Feb. 21, 2024

Watching the news, you get the sense that climate change is making the planet unlivable. We are bombarded with images of floods, droughts, storms and wildfires. We see deadly events nearby but also farflung disasters when the pictures are scary enough.

Yet the impression this barrage of catastrophe gives us is wildly misleading and makes it harder to get climate change policy right. Data show climate-related events like floods, droughts, storms and wildfires aren’t killing more people. In fact, deaths have dropped precipitously. Over the past decade, climate-related disasters have killed 98 per cent fewer people than a century ago.

This should not be surprising. The trend has been obvious for many decades, though it rarely gets reported. In the 1920s, the average death toll from weather disasters was 485,000 per year. In 1921, the New York Herald headlined its full-page coverage of droughts and famines across Europe: “Deaths for Millions in 1921’s Record Heat Wave.”

Since then, almost every decade has seen fewer deaths, with 168,000 average dead per year in the 1960s and fewer than 9,000 dead per year in the most recent decade, 2014-23.

The 98 per cent drop in climate-related deaths is revealed by the most respected international disaster database, which is the gold standard in measuring these effects. It’s reliable because very deadly catastrophes have been documented fairly consistently over the century.

It is true, of course, that smaller events — often with far fewer or even no fatalities — are more likely to have been overlooked in the past: there were fewer people around and technology was less advanced. The rise in reported events some media and climate campaigners take as evidence climate change is ravaging the planet (essentially ignoring the declining death toll).

Deadly events are few and declining

But all of the increase has been in less serious events, whereas more deadly events, which have always been reported, are few and declining. Moreover, the increase in the number of events is seen in all categories of disasters measured — not only weather disasters, but also geophysical disasters like volcanoes and earthquakes and technological disasters like train derailings. Not even radical climate activists claim climate change is causing more trains to de-rail or more volcanoes to erupt!

In sum, fatalities provide a much more robust measure. And they are falling dramatically because richer, more resilient societies are much better at protecting citizens than poorer, vulnerable ones. More resources and innovation mean more lives saved. Research shows this consistently across almost all catastrophes, including storms, cold waves and floods.

One much-cited study shows that at the beginning of this century, an average of 3.4 million people experienced coastal flooding, with US$11 billion in annual damages. Around US$13 billion or 0.05 per cent of global GDP was spent on coastal defences.

By the end of this century, there will be more people in harm’s way, and climate change likely will mean sea levels rise by up to a metre. If we do nothing and just keep coastal defences as they are today, vast areas of the planet will be routinely inundated, flooding 187 million people and causing damage worth US$55 trillion annually, costing more than five per cent of global GDP.

Richer countries can, and will, adapt to climate change

But richer societies will adapt before things get that bad — especially because the cost of adaptation is very low compared to the potential damage, at just 0.005 per cent of GDP. Sensible adaptation means that despite higher sea levels fewer people than ever will be flooded. By 2100, just 15,000 people will be flooded every year. Even the combined cost of adaptation and climate damages will fall — to just 0.008 per cent of GDP.

Seeing the bigger picture matters. Linking every disaster to climate change and wrongly suggesting things are getting much worse makes us ignore practical, cost-effective solutions while the media focus our attention on costly climate policies that help but little.

Enormously ambitious climate policies costing hundreds of trillions of dollars would cut the number of flooded people by the end of the century from 15,000 to about 10,000 per year. While adaptation saves almost all of the 3.4 million people flooded today, climate policy can, at best, save just 0.005 million.

The calculation is even more stark for poor countries with few resources and little disaster resilience. Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) suffered the largest recorded global death toll of 300,000 from a hurricane in 1970. Since then, it has developed and improved warning systems and shelters. Over the past decade, hurricane deaths have averaged just 160 per year, almost 2000 times lower. To help countries achieve fewer disaster deaths, we should promote prosperity, adaptation and resilience.

Of course, weather disasters are just one aspect of climate change, which is a real global challenge that we should fix in the smartest ways possible. But when we are inundated with “weather porn” and miss the fact that deaths have dropped precipitously, we end up focusing on the least effective policies first.

Bjorn Lom­borg, pres­i­dent of the Copen­hagen Con­sen­sus, is a vis­it­ing fel­low at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity’s Hoover In­sti­tu­tion. His new book is Best Things First, which The Econ­o­mist named one of the best books of 2023.

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