First Calculation of the Cost of Deadly Carbon Emissions

8 million people die every year in the world due to toxic air

  • Failure to address the problem of factory carbon exacerbates the risks of air pollution.

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The lifestyles of three ordinary Americans could lead to enough carbon emissions to heat the planet to kill one person, and emissions from a single coal-fired power plant are likely to result in more than 900 deaths, according to the first analysis of the deadly cost of carbon emissions.

"Social Cost of Carbon"

The new research relies on what's known as the "social cost of carbon," a monetary figure on the damage caused by each ton of carbon dioxide emissions, by determining the number of expected deaths from emissions that cause the climate crisis.

The analysis relies on several public health studies to conclude that for every 4,434 metric tons of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere above the rate of emissions by 2020, one person globally would die prematurely due to warming.

This additional rate of carbon dioxide emissions is equivalent to the emissions that every 3.5 Americans emit over their lifetime.

The research found that adding another four million metric tons above last year's level, produced by the average US coal plant, would cost 904 lives worldwide by the end of the century.

More broadly, eliminating greenhouse emissions by 2050 is expected to save 74 million lives worldwide this century.

Infinite numbers

The projected death figures from the release are not final, and may be "underestimated" because they only represent heat-related deaths, rather than deaths from floods, storms, crop failures and other impacts that stem from the climate crisis, according to Columbia University Earth Institute expert Daniel Pressler. , who wrote the paper.

Air pollution from burning fossil fuels also kills people directly. A landmark Harvard study, published in February, found that more than eight million people globally die each year from the health effects of toxic air.

“There are a large number of lives that could be saved if climate policies were taken that were more aggressive than the business-as-usual scenario,” Pressler says. It would also be much higher.”

Variations

The research, published in Nature Communications, illustrates the vast disparities in emissions from people's consumption in different countries around the world.

The paper found that while it takes just 3.5 Americans to emit enough emissions in their lifetime to kill one person, it could take 25 Brazilians or 146 Nigerians to do the same.

The social or financial cost of carbon became a widely used measure after the economic standard was created by William Nordhaus, later a Nobel Prize winner, in the 1990s.

The measurement calculates the damage caused by a ton of emissions, taking into account the ability to adapt to a changing climate.

The social cost of carbon is a "critical policy tool," says New York University climate economist Gernot Wagner, who was not involved in the research. On the cost of deaths, it appears that "the results are certainly exciting."

A series of heat waves have swept the world over the past month, including extreme heat and wildfires in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, breaking records in Seattle and Portland, and causing hundreds of deaths from heatstroke and other related conditions.

Scientists say the climate crisis, caused by carbon emissions, is making heat waves more frequent and intense.

• For every 4,434 metric tons of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere above the 2020 emissions rate, one person will die prematurely due to high temperatures.

Eliminating greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is expected to save 74 million lives worldwide this century.

• It takes only 3.5 Americans to emit enough emissions in their lifetime to kill one person, but it would take 25 Brazilians or 146 Nigerians to do the same.

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