News Feeds | ecology.iww.org (2024)

Bodies, Minds, and the Artificial Intelligence Industrial Complex

Resilience - Thu, 02/01/2024 - 02:54

Computers, be they boxes on desktops or the phones in pockets, are the most complex of tools to come into common daily use. And the computer network we call the Cloud is the most complex socio-technical system in history.

Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

Oil knew climate risks from '50s

Ecologist - Thu, 02/01/2024 - 02:30

Oil knew climate risks from '50s Channel News Catherine Early1st February 2024 Teaser Media

Categories: H. Green News

What I’ve learnt from a year at Climate Outreach

COIN - Thu, 02/01/2024 - 01:50

It’s been a WHOLE YEAR since I joined Climate Outreach!

And what a fantastic organisation it is. One of the real joys this year has been hearing this in my conversations with our partners and funders. “We love your work”, “we use your research all the time”, “the Britain Talks Climate research is the scaffolding for the sector”. It’s such a testament to the intelligence, insight and innovation of the staff, past and present.

When you join an organisation that’s already really well known and established, I think your main job is to keep thinking about what’s next. How can we build on what we’ve already done? How can we keep innovating? How do we build on our reputation?

The post What I’ve learnt from a year at Climate Outreach appeared first on Climate Outreach.

What happened when climate deniers met an AI chatbot?

Grist - Thu, 02/01/2024 - 01:45

If you’ve heard anything about the relationship between Big Tech and climate change, it’s probably that the data centers that power our online lives use a mind-boggling amount of power. And some of the newest energy hogs on the block are artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT. Some researchers suggest that ChatGPT alone might use as much power as 33,000 U.S. households in a typical day, a number that could balloon as the technology becomes more widespread.

The staggering emissions add to a general tenor of panic driven by headlines about AI stealing jobs, helping students cheat, or, who knows, taking over. Already, some 100 million people use OpenAI’s most famous chatbot on a weekly basis, and even those who don’t use it likely encounter AI-generated content often. But a recent study points to an unexpected upside of that wide reach: Tools like ChatGPT could teach people about climate change, and possibly shift deniers closer to accepting the overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming is happening and caused by humans.

In a study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison asked people to strike up a climate conversation with GPT-3, a large language model released by OpenAI in 2020. (ChatGPT runs on GPT-3.5 and 4, updated versions of GPT-3). Large language models are trained on vast quantities of data, allowing them to identify patterns to generate text based on what they’ve seen, conversing somewhat like a human would. The study is one of the first to analyze GPT-3’s conversations about social issues like climate change and Black Lives Matter. It analyzed the bot’s interactions with more than 3,000 people, mostly in the United States, from across the political spectrum. Roughly a quarter of them came into the study with doubts about established climate science, and they tended to come away from their chatbot conversations a little more supportive of the scientific consensus.

That doesn’t mean they enjoyed the experience, though. They reported feeling disappointed after chatting with GPT-3 about the topic, rating the bot’s likability about half a point or lower on a 5-point scale. That creates a dilemma for the people designing these systems, said Kaiping Chen, an author of the study and a professor of computation communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As large language models continue to develop, the study says, they could begin to respond to people in a way that matches users’ opinions — regardless of the facts.

“You want to make your user happy, otherwise they’re going to use other chatbots. They’re not going to get onto your platform, right?” Chen said. “But if you make them happy, maybe they’re not going to learn much from the conversation.”

Prioritizing user experience over factual information could lead ChatGPT and similar tools to become vehicles for bad information, like many of the platforms that shaped the internet and social media before it. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, now known as X, are awash in lies and conspiracy theories about climate change. Last year, for instance, posts with the hashtag #climatescam have gotten more likes and retweets on X than ones with #climatecrisis or #climateemergency.

“We already have such a huge problem with dis- and misinformation,” said Lauren Cagle, a professor of rhetoric and digital studies at the University of Kentucky. Large language models like ChatGPT “are teetering on the edge of exploding that problem even more.”

Read Next The overlooked climate consequences of AI Akielly Hu

The University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers found that the kind of information GPT-3 delivered depended on who it was talking to. For conservatives and people with less education, it tended to use words associated with negative emotions and talk about the destructive outcomes of global warming, from drought to rising seas. For those who supported the scientific consensus, it was more likely to talk about the things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint, like eating less meat or walking and biking when you can.

What GPT-3 told them about climate change was surprisingly accurate, according to the study: Only 2 percent of its responses went against the commonly understood facts about climate change. These AI tools reflect what they’ve been fed and are liable to slip up sometimes. Last April, an analysis from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a U.K. nonprofit, found that Google’s chatbot, Bard, told one user, without additional context: “There is nothing we can do to stop climate change, so there is no point in worrying about it.”

It’s not difficult to use ChatGPT to generate misinformation, though OpenAI does have a policy against using the platform to intentionally mislead others. It took some prodding, but I managed to get GPT-4, the latest public version, to write a paragraph laying out the case for coal as the fuel of the future, even though it initially tried to steer me away from the idea. The resulting paragraph mirrors fossil fuel propaganda, touting “clean coal,” a misnomer used to market coal as environmentally friendly.

There’s another problem with large language models like ChatGPT: They’re prone to “hallucinations,” or making up information. Even simple questions can turn up bizarre answers that fail a basic logic test. I recently asked ChatGPT-4, for instance, how many toes a possum has (don’t ask why). It responded, “A possum typically has a total of 50 toes, with each foot having 5 toes.” It only corrected course after I questioned whether a possum had 10 limbs. “My previous response about possum toes was incorrect,” the chatbot said, updating the count to the correct answer, 20 toes.

Despite these flaws, there are potential upsides to using chatbots to help people learn about climate change. In a normal, human-to-human conversation, lots of social dynamics are at play, especially between groups of people with radically different worldviews. If an environmental advocate tries to challenge a coal miner’s views about global warming, for example, it might make the miner defensive, leading them to dig in their heels. A chatbot conversation presents more neutral territory.

“For many people, it probably means that they don’t perceive the interlocutor, or the AI chatbot, as having identity characteristics that are opposed to their own, and so they don’t have to defend themselves,” Cagle said. That’s one explanation for why climate deniers might have softened their stance slightly after chatting with GPT-3.

There’s now at least one chatbot aimed specifically at providing quality information about climate change. Last month, a group of startups launched “ClimateGPT,” an open-source large language model that’s trained on climate-related studies about science, economics, and other social sciences. One of the goals of the ClimateGPT project was to generate high quality answers without sucking up an enormous amount of electricity. It uses 12 times less computing energy than a comparable large language model, according to Christian Dugast, a natural language scientist at AppTek, a Virginia-based artificial intelligence company that helped fine-tune the new bot.

ClimateGPT won’t be quite ready for the general public “until proper safeguards are tested,” according to its website. Despite the problems Dugast is working on addressing — the “hallucinations” and factual failures common among these chatbots — he thinks it could be useful for people hoping to learn more about some aspect of the changing climate.

“The more I think about this type of system,” Dugast said, “the more I am convinced that when you’re dealing with complex questions, it’s a good way to get informed, to get a good start.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What happened when climate deniers met an AI chatbot? on Feb 1, 2024.

Categories: H. Green News

Shell Throws Cash Fiesta for Shareholders as Profits Take a ‘Modest’ Dip

Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com - Thu, 02/01/2024 - 01:44

“As we enter 2024, we are continuing to simplify our organization with a focus on delivering more value with less emissions,” proclaimed Wael Sawan, Shell’s chief executive, presumably with a straight face.

Posted by John Donovan: 1 Feb 24

In the latest saga of “Billionaires at Play,” Shell, the oil behemoth with a heart of coal, has graciously announced a titanic profit of only $28.2 billion for 2023, a tear-jerking decrease from its 2022 high of $39.9 billion. Cue the violins, as this marks a somber moment in Shell’s 115-year history of environmental philanthropy.

As oil and gas prices took a nap last year, Shell’s profits decided to join them, resulting in a mere $7.3 billion in the last quarter, a figure that somehow still managed to exceed the low expectations of analysts. “As we enter 2024, we are continuing to simplify our organization with a focus on delivering more value with less emissions,” proclaimed Wael Sawan, Shell’s chief executive, presumably with a straight face.

Remember the days when energy prices had us checking our bank accounts with bated breath? Shell remembers. After all, they and their ilk were throwing a profit party with the record earnings made during the energy crisis spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But don’t worry, households still face high bills, ensuring that the spirit of generosity is alive and well.

In a display of unparalleled magnanimity, Shell confirmed it had contributed $802 million to the UK’s windfall tax kitty for 2022, a pittance compared to their profits but a gesture nonetheless. The amount for 2023 remains a closely guarded secret, likely to avoid causing widespread envy.

And now, the pièce de résistance: Shell has decided to return $23 billion to its shareholders because, in these trying times, it’s the shareholders who need the most support. Not to be content with mere pocket change, Shell is upping its dividend by 4% and launching a $3.5 billion share buyback program. Because what’s a few billion among friends?

Shell’s adjusted earnings took a humble bow, dropping to $28.3 billion for 2023, down a modest 29% from the previous year’s record. But fear not, for Shell revealed a 17% increase in adjusted profits for the fourth quarter, much to the delight of Greenpeace activists who, in a fit of misplaced enthusiasm, held a “profit party” outside Shell’s headquarters.

Sawan couldn’t contain his excitement, saying, “Shell delivered another quarter of strong performance, concluding a year in which we made good progress across the targets outlined at our capital markets day.” Ah, the sweet sound of progress.

In a thrilling twist, Shell also hinted at future blockbusters, with talks of impairment charges up to $4.5 billion, thanks to such thrilling external developments as portfolio choices and the potential sale of its Singapore refining and chemicals hub. Stay tuned for more adventures in profitability, as Shell continues its noble quest to simplify its organization while delivering “more value with less emissions.” What a time to be alive!DISCLAIMER: Content published on this non-commercial platform may incorporate information generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and various other technological means, including translation and information published on Wikipedia. The articles presented may be satirical adaptations derived from one or more previously published sources, crafted to maintain factual accuracy while incorporating elements of satire. Individuals or entities mentioned in our articles are encouraged to notify us of any inaccuracies that may require rectification. Readers are advised to verify all information for accuracy and completeness independently.Shell Throws Cash Fiesta for Shareholders as Profits Take a ‘Modest’ Dip was first posted on February 1, 2024 at 10:44 am.
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Categories: J2. Fossil Fuel Industry

Joint Statement: Don’t Fuel the Fire

Global Forest Coalition - Thu, 02/01/2024 - 01:31

Don’t fuel the fire!We need real solutions and real emission reductions: Now, in 2040 and beyond.

We – over 140 organisations – call on the EU to be a true climate leader by supporting real climate action and denouncing dangerous distractions and false solutions like carbon capture and removal technologies.

At COP28, the European Union (EU) supported calls for the world to phase out fossil fuels. But now it has been revealed that the EU’s own planned climate targets for 2040 might rely extensively on dangerous distractions, including carbon capture and storage and speculative carbon removal technologies that will delay the transition away from oil, gas, and coal. EU decision-makers must stop the hypocrisy of calling for a fossil fuel phase-out internationally, while promoting the contrary in their domestic policies.

To avoid the worst effects of climate chaos, we must immediately, equitably, and justly transform the way we produce our food, relate to the Earth’s ecosystems and power our economies. We must urgently deploy evidence-based, socially just and people-led solutions to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, down to Real Zero.

A target that includes not only emission reductions but significantly relies upon carbon capture and carbon and storage – which have a 50 year record of failure – and carbon removal activities hides the lack of ambition in committing to real action and deep emission cuts today. A ‘net’ target gives the false promise that ‘nature-based solutions’ and speculative technologies for ‘carbon dioxide removal’ will one day suck vast amounts of ongoing carbon pollution out of the atmosphere. But both, temporary carbon storage in soils and forest and technological approaches come with massive uncertainties, risks and limits. Some of those approaches could, if they were implemented at scale, even accelerate the climate and biodiversity crises and put rural communities and resilient food systems at risk. Ecosystem restoration is critical beyond its function as a carbon sink but cannot serve as a substitution for emission reductions.

The European Commission’s new plan for so-called ‘industrial carbon management’ is a smokescreen for continued use of fossil fuels. The plan claims to ‘manage’ the carbon emissions associated with fossil fuels through Carbon Capture Use and Storage (CCUS) technologies. These are the fossil fuel industry’s favourite escape hatch towards inaction and delay. Other promoted ‘carbon management’ technologies, such as Direct Air Capture with Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS) and Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) are unproven, extremely costly and especially destructive if scaled. Attempts to widely scale-up these technologies risk delaying the needed emission reductions, including by diverting energy and resources.

Choosing a pathway that fails to cut emissions adequately in the near term while handing out new subsidies to the fossil fuel industry is an extremely dangerous gamble and an irresponsible and unjust choice. Including so-called biomass-based removals (such as BECCS and biochar) risks creating a new support mechanism for burning wood at an even larger scale, thereby causing more forest degradation and habitat loss, and harming the climate.

Staying below 1.5°C of warming requires real, just, and immediate reductions. Real climate solutions involve empowering communities and stopping – not accelerating – the scramble for land, power, and profit.

It is clear what Real Zero needs to look like: a just and equitably managed phase-out of fossil fuels; a real reduction of energy consumption for the ultra-rich and for industrialised countries; a transition to fair, democratic and sustainable renewable energy; support for small-scale farmers and for a fair transition from industrial food and agricultural systems towards agroecology and food sovereignty; close-to-nature forestry practices and a reduction of the excessive demand for wood and agricultural commodities; recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ and small farmers’ land rights; and the redirection of public subsidies away from fossil fuels and harmful industrial agriculture and forestry systems to support these measures.

Signed by:

1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations

11 maart beweging

Aalem for Orphan and Vulnerable Children, Inc.

AbibiNsroma Foundation

African CSO Biodiversity Alliance (ACBA)

Agora Association

Amigos de la Tierra España

AnsvarligFremtid

ARA

ARRCC (Australian Religious Response to Climate Change)

Asrori Farm

Association For Promotion Sustainable Development

Association pour la Conservation et la Protection des Écosystèmes des Lacs et l’Agriculture Durable

BI “Saubere Umwelt & Energie Altmark”

Slow down, do less: A Q&A with the author who introduced ‘degrowth’ to a mass audience

Grist - Thu, 02/01/2024 - 01:30

Imagine a world where you work three or four days a week. In your free time, you play sports, spend time with loved ones, garden, and engage with local politics. Overnight shipping, advertising, and private jets no longer exist, but healthcare, education, and clean electricity are free and available to all.

That’s the radical vision proposed by philosophy professor and Marxist scholar Kohei Saito. In 2020, as residents in Japan hunkered down during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Saito published a book that would eventually become a surprise bestseller, titled Capital in the Anthropocene. Relentless consumption and production, the drivers of economic growth, have fueled the climate crisis and global inequality, Saito argues in the book. He instead promotes degrowth — a deliberate shrinking of the economy — as a way to redistribute resources and shift to a slower economic system that prioritizes human welfare and planetary well-being.

No one, not even Saito, could have predicted the response. His book sold more than 500,000 copies in Japan, has been translated into multiple languages, and garnered international media attention. Last month, a much-anticipated English translation, titled Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto, was released in the United States. “Even I thought my ideas were too radical to find much of an audience,” Saito writes in the introduction to the English edition. “Who would read a book on ‘degrowth communism’ written by a basically unknown scholar of political thought in the Marxist tradition?”

Yet Saito’s book has found readers across the world who want to listen. In Japan, when his book was initially released in 2020, decades of economic stagnation and neoliberal reform had crystallized into open frustration as the pandemic widened existing inequalities. For some, the COVID crisis shed light on how policies oriented around economic growth had failed to prevent either the pandemic or rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. and other wealthy countries, climate advocates are increasingly debating whether countries should deprioritize economic growth to slow global warming. On one hand, building out renewable energy and clean technologies will necessarily lead to new jobs and more economic activity. Developing countries also need to grow their economies to raise standards of living. But degrowth advocates, including Saito and economists like Jason Hickel and Tim Jackson, say that simply swapping in clean energy for fossil fuels isn’t enough. They argue that high-income countries, responsible for the lion’s share of global greenhouse gas emissions, should also reduce energy use and resource extraction from developing nations, while focusing on providing the basics —such as food, clean water, shelter, and energy — to residents at no cost.

Grist sat down with Saito to discuss why his anti-capitalist messages have struck a chord with readers and what degrowth might look like in practice. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Q. Why do you think we’re seeing a growing interest in critiquing capitalism, and degrowth in general?

A. Looking at previous decades, neoliberal reforms really destabilized our society all over the world. And there are a lot of discussions about how we can solve the climate crisis, and how we can solve economic inequality. But these measures are not properly working, and the climate crisis has been accelerating. People are suffering from precarious jobs, low wages, and a lot of competition. And people are indeed unhappy.

Degrowth and the idea of post-capitalism are of course in some sense utopian at the moment. But at the same time, people who are really looking for an alternative — people who really care about the crisis — can’t find the answer within the existing framework. I don’t claim that my answer is definitive and comprehensive, but it resonates with the general atmosphere of dissatisfaction and discontent, especially among younger generations.

Q. I want to dig into your critiques of capitalism as laid out in Slow Down. Could you talk about why you think capitalism drives global inequality and climate change?

A. Karl Marx famously demonstrated that capitalism has the tendency to enlarge economic inequality because capitalism exploits workers so that the capital is accumulated in the hands of the few. And Marx also said that in such a system where people are exploited, nature is also exploited. We didn’t really recognize this tendency for many years because affluent countries, like the U.S., Japan, and the E.U., were able to externalize a lot of costs to somewhere else.

That means that our affluent lives are often supported by cheap products and cheap resources based on the exploitation of nature and humans in the Global South.

A private jet at the Santa Fe Municipal Airport in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Robert Alexander / Getty Images

Capitalism has subsumed the entire planet now because of globalization. That means we externalized all the costs. Now, we don’t have any more space to externalize because China is expanding, Brazil is expanding, India is expanding: Everyone tries to be a capitalist and it doesn’t work anymore. We are encountering the global ecological crisis, the pandemic, the climate crisis, competition for resources —and these things are closely related to capitalism and the tendency to constantly expand.

Q. Many climate policies today, like Green New Deal proposals, are focused on expanding renewable energy and clean technology, while creating new jobs and continuing to grow the economy. In your view, why are these measures insufficient for tackling the climate crisis?

A. First of all, I’m not against technology. We need renewable energy. We need electric vehicles and so on. I’m for inventing new technologies and investing more in developing cheaper, sustainable energy. I’m not an advocate of “going back to nature.”

The problem is that when we try to grow, we sell more products and bigger products. The most representative case is SUVs. Even if we transition to electric vehicles, if we keep building bigger cars, we still use a lot of energy and resources that come mainly from the Global South. So there will be a continuation of the robbing of land and resources, exploitation of mining workers and the destruction of Indigenous life, deforestation, and so on.

I think what’s necessary is: Invest in those green technologies. But at the same time, we should start talking about the need to reduce the number of cars, for example, or industrial meat consumption, or frequency of flying. Maybe we should ban private jets. Maybe we should ban domestic short-distance flights because we can take trains. These things must be also prioritized.

The problem with the existing mainstream green capitalism discourse is they never talk about reducing our excessive consumption and production, because that’s not something capitalism can accept. For everyone to live a decent life on this planet, the Global North needs to give up what is unnecessary. That’s not something capitalism can do.

Q. In response, you’re promoting an alternative economic vision of degrowth communism. How could this better achieve global climate goals?

A. Degrowth is about abandoning GDP [gross domestic product] as the single measure of our progress. Degrowth is also about reducing what is unnecessary.

GDP can be increased by producing what is unnecessary, like private jets. I’m saying, OK, maybe we don’t need these things because that’s only for rich people, and that’s also destroying the planet. So why don’t we spend money and energy on something that is more sustainable and that everyone needs? For example, free internet, free public transportation, free education, free medical care. These things that are mostly commodified, especially in the U.S., must be de-commodified.

President Joe Biden test-drives an electric hummer in Detroit, Michigan, in November 2021. Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images

Our current model is that when the economy grows, the pie becomes bigger, so everyone will have a bigger share. But in this process of making the economy bigger, we produce so many unnecessary things. Once we make a transition to a degrowth society, the pie of the economy won’t grow bigger anymore. That means that we need to share existing wealth.

Of course, there are things we cannot share, like private property. But for example, we could share knowledge and education, public transportation, culture, communal farming, electricity, and so on. That means that we can be happier, have more access to essential goods and services, and live a more stable life.

We will not have a new iPhone every two years. We will not have fast fashion. We will not have industrial meat production. We might not have something like McDonald’s, but we will have more healthy meals. We will have more sustainable clothing that you can wear for many years. You might give up something, but at the same time, you gain social stability, community, and better products.

Q. Some people have raised concerns that slowing economic growth would hurt countries that are still developing. What would degrowth mean for the Global South?

A. I’m not saying that the Global South should immediately accept the principles of degrowth. We need to build more roads, buildings, schools, and hospitals. We also need to make more power plants and solar panels.

But I think even when they grow, they should place more importance on satisfying basic needs rather than making things more profitable and competitive, which is how development has been imposed by the World Bank through structural adjustment programs [conditions on loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that require developing countries to encourage privatization and free trade]. We need different models of development in the Global South.

There will be, of course, more usage of resources and energy in countries in the Global South, because right now they are under-consuming. Their development necessarily involves more consumption of energy and resources. That creates some pressure on planetary boundaries. So that means that the Global North needs to consciously degrow because it is over-developing, and has excessive production and consumption.

Clothing on sale in Miami, Florida. Jeffrey Greenberg / Education Images / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Q. You write in the book about how a degrowth transition doesn’t have to happen all at once, and that in fact, it’s already happening. Could you talk about a few examples you see today that represent a step toward degrowth?

A. France has banned short-distance domestic flights —that is one important step. Some European societies are now experimenting with shorter working hours, like a four-day workweek. Free education and free medical care are other examples. We should expand these to free internet, which is something [former U.K. Labour Party leader] Jeremy Corbyn put forward during his electoral campaign a couple years ago.

We should also introduce maximum limits on annual incomes, worker cooperatives, and social ownership of companies, including water companies and electricity companies. These are some of the basic countermeasures that we can introduce within capitalism.

Q. Some say degrowth is too politically challenging, and that asking people in the Global North to, for example, cut down their consumption would be quite unpopular. What would it take to achieve such a widespread shift in priorities on a political level? Is pursuing degrowth realistic?

A. I think it’s in some sense utopian. But believing that capitalism will prosper in the decades to come is utopian too, because we will have more natural disasters, inflation, wars — and these will all accelerate with the climate crisis. So it’s naive to think that our way of life will somehow continue.

I think more people, especially among the younger generation, are demanding a more radical change. Fifteen years ago, I don’t imagine movements like Sunrise Movement, Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, and Just Stop Oil would get support from society or enough media attention. But I think our perception is radically changing, and people like Greta Thunberg really shifted our discussion to another level. The reevaluation of values can take place actually quite rapidly.

What I’m trying to do is present new values and principles of a more democratic and sustainable society. If people read my book and find some of the proposals attractive, their perception of the world is starting to change. And I think this accumulation of change can have a very significant impact over time.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Slow down, do less: A Q&A with the author who introduced ‘degrowth’ to a mass audience on Feb 1, 2024.

Categories: H. Green News

Climate change will kill 14.5 million people globally by 2050 — but mostly not directly

Grist - Thu, 02/01/2024 - 01:15

Climate change is triggering a global health crisis that may approach the death toll of some of history’s deadliest plagues. Unlike the 1918 flu epidemic or the COVID-19 pandemic, which were caused by the widespread outbreak of one type of bacteria or virus, climate change-fueled illness is a Hydra-headed challenge that erodes human health on multiple distinct fronts. Efforts are underway to tally this risk, and a growing body of research indicates that climate-related health threats, such as cardiovascular, diarrheal, and vector-borne diseases, have already killed millions of people — a count that will grow steeper as warming accelerates.

A recent report from the World Economic Forum, a non-governmental organization that promotes public-private partnership on global issues, and Oliver Wyman, a consulting firm, projects that rising temperatures will “place immense strain on global healthcare systems” in the coming years. Climate change will cause 14.5 million additional deaths by 2050, the report says, and spur $12.5 trillion in economic losses. Healthcare systems — hospitals, emergency rooms, doctors, and nurses — will also have to provide an extra $1.1 trillion worth of treatment by mid-century because of climate change.

These challenges will be felt most acutely in the Global South, where healthcare resources are already limited and governments lack the capacity to respond to cascading climate impacts such as worsening floods, heat waves, and storms. According to the report, central Africa and southern Asia are two regions that are particularly vulnerable to the overlap of intensifying climate health threats and limited resources.

“Climate change is transforming the landscape of morbidity and mortality,” the report says. “The most vulnerable populations, including women, youth, elderly, lower-income groups, and hard-to-reach communities, will be the most affected by climate-related consequences.”

Displaced people find shelter in Faenza after torrential rains and landslides affected northern Italy in 2023. Emanuele Cremaschi/Getty Images

In total, the report identified six weather events most likely to trigger negative health outcomes: floods, droughts, wildfires, sea-level rise, tropical storms, and heat waves. The authors examined the direct and indirect effects of each of these events.

The burden of indirect impacts far outweighed the direct effects. For example, floods can trigger landslides that injure and kill people during or directly after a flood occurs. But the longer-term consequences of flooding kill more people. Floods eat away at coastlines, damage infrastructure, and kill crops, which in turn contribute to the expansion of mosquito habitat, increase moisture and humidity in the air, and fuel food insecurity. Infectious diseases, respiratory illnesses, malnutrition, and mental health issues follow. The report predicts that the greatest health consequences of extreme rainfall and flooding in central Africa and Southeast Asia, two of the regions that face the worst effects of climate-driven flooding, will be malaria and post-traumatic stress disorder, respectively. The economic impact of these illnesses and other flood-related health issues will top $1.6 trillion.

The report found that floods, which pose the highest risk of climate-related mortality, will kill an estimated 8.5 million additional people globally by mid-century because of climate change. Droughts linked to extreme heat, the second-highest driver of climate mortality, will lead to more than 3 million extra deaths. The report estimates that 500 million additional people could be exposed to vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, and Zika virus by 2050, many of them in regions that don’t typically have to contend with those illnesses today, such as Europe and the United States. The authors made these projections using a middle-of-the-road climate scenario, in which governments continue to make slow, halting progress toward achieving international climate goals. If fossil fuel use continues unabated or ramps up further through 2050, the health consequences of climate change will be much more severe, and millions more people will die.

Daniel R. Brooks, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto and author of a book on climate change and emerging diseases, told Grist that it’s encouraging that business-oriented institutions like the World Economic Forum are beginning to tally the direct and longer-term health effects of climate change. But he noted that more work needs to be done to capture the full scope of the climate change-related public health burden. “These staggering numbers are actually conservative,” said Brooks, who was not involved in the research.

Large epidemiological blind spots cover much of Africa, Southeast Asia, and other parts of the world that have historically lacked the resources to collect and publish health and climate data. That means studies that use existing data to make their projections, as this report did, necessarily miss a big part of the picture. “It is imperative to recognize that the true toll of storms may be underestimated because of the lack of comprehensive data capturing indirect effects,” the report acknowledged in a section dedicated to the health effects of tropical storms. “This is particularly true for low-income and other vulnerable populations.”

Women walk past an eroded section of the Padma river in Munshiganj, Bangladesh. MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP via Getty Images

Developed countries are already armed with much of the information and many of the tools required to avert the mass casualties the report projects. The authors outlined a multi-pronged approach these countries can take. The first step is obvious and essential: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible. Every tenth of a degree of warming dodged corresponds to hundreds of thousands of lives saved around the world. “The holy grail will lie in prevention,” said Rolf Fricker, a partner at Oliver Wyman and a coauthor of the report. “This is the most important thing.”

Governments must also treat climate change like a public health crisis, and dedicate resources to establishing climate and health offices that will guide policy and divert resources to where they are needed. The United States is an example of a country that began such a process in 2021 by establishing an Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, which is waiting on congressional funding in order to begin the work of assessing and responding to the risks climate change poses to Americans’ health. The U.S. is something of an outlier in this respect. For example, Fricker, who lives in Germany, said his government hasn’t even begun to quantify the health risks of climate change, despite having to contend with expansive flooding issues and intensifying heat waves in recent years. These climate impacts put hospitals, clinics, and other parts of Germany’s healthcare system at risk.

In developing countries, where the resources to establish and fund such operations do not exist, wealthier governments, foundations, and private companies must step in to fill the void, Fricker said. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has dedicated tens of millions of dollars to this effort, and other foundations are doing similar work, but the scale of investment needs to increase exponentially. A tiny fraction of the already limited international climate adaptation funding pledged to the Global South by wealthy nations is dedicated to health projects. More funding would allow at-risk countries to make their hospitals and clinics more resilient to climate change, stockpile medicines and vaccines that can protect people from the projected rise in vector-borne and diarrheal diseases, collect data on how climate change is affecting the public, and educate communities about the dangers at hand and ahead.

Last week, Barbados, Fiji, Kenya, the United Kingdom, and a handful of other countries proposed a draft decision on climate change and health that calls on members of the United Nations to invest in some of the solutions proposed in the World Economic Forum report. The draft, which may be adopted in the spring at the 77th World Health Assembly — the decision-making body of the World Health Organization — suggests that nations carry out periodic climate and health assessments, conduct disease surveillance monitoring, and cooperate with other governments on the issue of climate change and human health. The draft, if adopted, would mark a historic and important step toward protecting people from the impacts predicted in the report. Brooks, the professor at the University of Toronto, is hopeful that 2024 will produce meaningful progress on the climate-health crisis. “Not only do we have a number of challenges that are being addressed individually by really smart people,” he said, “but all of those challenges connect with and influence each other.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Climate change will kill 14.5 million people globally by 2050 — but mostly not directly on Feb 1, 2024.

Categories: H. Green News