When attempting to quantify future harms caused by carbon emissions and to set appropriate energy policies, it has been argued that the most important metric is the number of human deaths caused by climate change. Several studies have attempted to overcome the uncertainties associated with such forecasting. In this article, approaches to estimating future human death tolls from climate change relevant at any scale or location are compared and synthesized, and implications for energy policy are considered. Several studies are consistent with the “1000-ton rule,” according to which a future person is killed every time 1000 tons of fossil carbon are burned (order-of-magnitude estimate). If warming reaches or exceeds 2 °C this century, mainly richer humans will be responsible for killing roughly 1 billion mainly poorer humans through anthropogenic global warming, which is comparable with involuntary or negligent manslaughter. On this basis, relatively aggressive energy policies are summarized that would enable immediate and substantive decreases in carbon emissions. The limitations to such calculations are outlined and future work is recommended to accelerate the decarbonization of the global economy while minimizing the number of sacrificed human lives.
  • tetraodon@feddit.it
    4·
    1 year ago

    The most terrifying statistic is that an intercontinental flight equals to 13 human life days.

    I.e. for each day of your forthnight-long holiday in Phuket you are removing 2 days from someone’s life, and this is just counting the emissions from the flights!

    • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
      2·
      1 year ago

      This is the reason why those who hinder and prevent ecological and sustainable change should be judged and condemned as terrorists and genocidal and not continue another minute in politics or be able to influence it.

      • tetraodon@feddit.it
        3·
        1 year ago

        For as long as money talks, this will be just a dream, and unfortunately there is little in human history able to focus human effort as money, except perhaps the threat of here-and-now destruction. But climate destruction is not here-and-now, at least for those with the money, so I’m rather pessimistic about our current civilization’s chances.

  • library_napper@monyet.cc
    3·
    1 year ago

    Many authors have considered the benefits of a “corporate death penalty” (judicial dissolution of a corporation by the government) for reigning in companies that do harm [85,86,87,88,89,90]

    Yes plz