How Much Fossil Fuel Must Burn to Cause a Future Human Death?
In the early 2000s, while politicians buried their heads in climate sand, Australian epidemiologist Anthony McMichael dared to ask and then quantify the deadly impact: How many people were being killed by climate change?
His team cut through the fog of denialism, tallying up deaths from diarrheal disease, malnutrition, malaria, cardiovascular issues (a stand-in for heat-related illness), and flooding. Eventually, they fingered climate change for a grim toll of 166,000 lives during 2000.
Fast forward to now. Yes, denialism and even political negligence has a parasitic orange face spreading around the world as temperatures keep rising. But in the meantime, climate science has flourished (even though these days feel like the opposite, I know) bringing comprehensive data on how climate chaos affects everything, from the mundane to the escalating climate events.
Yet despite the undeniable urgency, assessing how many people are currently being killed by the climate crisis has remained conspicuously stagnant, and the McMichael standard stands alone. And incomplete.
United Nations reports show that each year, 13 million people die due to environmental factors. However, the exact number of deaths directly or indirectly caused by climate change remains unclear. Some researchers argue that abnormal temperatures alone could already be causing as many as five million deaths per year.
A commentary by Colin Carlson, a global change biologist, took the McMichael standard to its logical conclusion: by the end of 2024, climate change will have killed roughly 4 million people globally since the turn of the century. That’s 1 of every 10 people in my country, Argentina, or the entire population of Croatia, stunting every non-COVID health crisis the World Health Organization has ever declared.
Still, 4 million is a lowball figure — probably a massive one. The McMichael standard ignores deaths from diseases like dengue and West Nile virus, spread by warming-fueled mosquitoes. It overlooks fatalities from wildfires and their smoke, the mental health toll of extreme weather, and the surge in suicides tied to climate extremes.
“We knew it was lowballing it,” admited Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, a coauthor of McMichael’s 2003.
The absence of comprehensive data, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, poses a significant obstacle. McMichael’s crude method, though pioneering, underscores the urgent need for a thorough reevaluation of the human toll of climate change.
As preventable deaths continue to mount, it’s time to acknowledge climate change for what it truly is: a global health emergency.
And there seems to be a scientific rule of thumb linking anthropogenic global warming with the mounting deaths ahead.
Fossil Fuels: A Paradoxical Miracle
Burning carbon has fulfilled the miracle of extended lifespans and unprecedented comfort, largely due to energy-fueled advancements in agriculture, heating, cooking, transport, manufacturing, and construction.
And we blindly consume it, like disciplined automatons. Why? Because they provide four key materials, the foundations of our way of life, crucial for everything we do. Think about it: our advanced societies wouldn’t exist without certain materials. We had Concord before Facebook. But to maintain our quality of life, these four materials stand out as the building blocks of our modern world: cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia.
These unassuming substances are the hidden drivers of our climate catastrophe, more vital to our way of life than even the latest technological marvels. Organic fertilizers can't match ammonia's efficiency. No material rivals plastic's versatility. Steel remains unmatched in strength for mass production. And nothing compares to concrete.) for building infrastructure.
And here's what these materials share: they can't be easily replaced, their demand is insatiable, and their production is inextricably linked to fossil fuels.
So, what’s the cost for all this convenience and efficiency? About 17% of global energy consumption to produce these materials, generating 25% of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Right now, alternatives like renewable energy are gaining ground but are not enough to replace any of these fossil-fueled, energy-intensive materials on a large scale.
Why? Because all the derivatives from Big Oil (Agri, Plastic, and Construction) continue to feast on parasitic financial schemes, perpetuating a carbon-intensive nightmare instead of steering our global economy toward a sustainable future.
However, our reliance on carbon is now going the opposite way: it’s stealing future life-years. Essentially, the fossil fuels humanity burns today are tomorrow’s death warrants.
Carbon Paradox: The 1000-Ton Rule
A review of 180 articles on the human death rate of climate change, a distressing figure emerged: upwards of a billion people could die from climate-related catastrophes over the next century. A billion lives lost would be the single greatest tragedy in human history. During World War II, approximately 75 million people perished: this climate crisis could be an order of magnitude 26 times larger than that. That’s around a tenth of the world’s population, where one out of every three families on Earth loses a member due to climate change.
It is based on the solid scientific consensus of the “1000-ton rule,” according to which one future premature death is caused every time roughly 1,000 (300–3,000) tonnes of carbon are burned. Therefore, any fossil-fuel project, a.k.a Big Oil’s Deadly Little Secret, that burns millions of tons of carbon is probably indirectly killing thousands of future people. The rule predicts that the death will happen in the next 1–2 centuries, probably in a developing country. Beyond that, it says nothing about the time and place of death.
The average US citizen produces 1,840 tonnes CO2 equivalent from burning 500 tonnes of carbon during their lifetime, so the average Joe is killing half of a future person. And, on average, for every long jet flight, a future person dies.
To put things into perspective, global fossil carbon emissions for 2023 were 36.8 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent from burning around 10 billion tonnes of carbon. That means the world just wiped out the entire 10,000,000 (!) people living in Portugal from the map. The current rate of carbon emissions is 10 times greater than the last time global mean surface temperature (GMST) was relatively high, 56 million years ago during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM).
As with most predictions for the future, the “1000-ton rule” is based on several assumptions.
If current trends persist and temperatures soar past 2°C above preindustrial levels in the coming decades, the toll will be staggering. With each 0.1°C of warming going forward, an estimated 100 million deaths could be in store.
In any case, estimating the human death toll from climate change is extremely tricky. Crop failures, droughts, flooding, extreme weather, wildfires, and rising seas can all impact human lives in subtle and complex ways. And significant lack of mortality data in low- and middle-income countries adds to the troubling calculations.
Despite the challenge, predicting future casualties is a necessary endeavor: quantifying emissions in terms of human lives lost instead of economic losses—incomparable by every sane, non-predatory human being—not only simplifies the figures for public comprehension but also underscores the urgency for action.
To illustrate this urgency, Pierce and Parncutt, authors of the rule, applied it to the controversial Adani Carmichael coalmine in Australia, set to become the largest of its kind. Burning all its reserves could result in an estimated 3 million premature deaths in the future, with many of the victims being children in the Global South.
It is important to notice that the 1000-ton rule does not consider potential climate feedback loops, which could exacerbate environmental consequences beyond current estimates. This rule is considered “an order of magnitude best estimate” with a range of 0.1 to 10 deaths per 1000 tons of carbon burned, leaving room for even graver scenarios.
“When climate scientists run their models and then report on them, everybody leans toward being conservative, because no one wants to sound like Doctor Doom. We’ve done that here too and it still doesn’t look good,” said Pierce.
Climate Domino Effect
Greenhouse gas emissions indirectly cause future deaths through multiple mechanisms. Here’s a rundown of the widely agreed-upon climate crisis forecast that illustrates the magnitude of the problem:
Rising seas will threaten coastal homes and cities, while salination of agricultural soils will render farming land useless.
Dry regions will become even drier, experiencing longer droughts, groundwater depletion, and glacier melting, which will severely affect agriculture.
Expect more frequent and off-the-chart storms like hurricanes, cyclones, and tornadoes, destroying crops and buildings and causing floods and epidemics. Consider the recent dengue outbreak in Brazil and Argentina as a stark example.
Heatwaves will intensify, posing fatal risks as wet-bulb temperatures approach human skin temperature, hindering the body’s ability to cool down through sweat.
The current rate of species extinction, already 100–1,000 times faster than without human influence, will continue to rise, leading to the sixth mass extinction event.
Each of these points will affect supplies of food and fresh water, increasing current death rates due to hunger, deficient nutritional content, and disease. The interconnection of these threats could trigger ecological cascades and co-extinctions while also fueling international conflicts, including the ominous prospect of water wars.
But the dangers don’t stop there. There’s a looming risk of runaway Anthropogenic global warming, where global temperatures continue to rise even after human emissions cease, driven by positive feedback loops:
As the ice melts, less radiated heat from the sun is reflected back into space, so more is absorbed, reducing Earth’s albedo and causing more ice to melt, reducing Earth’s albedo.
Oceans and soils, saturated with carbon, become less effective at absorbing CO2.
Thawing permafrost releases massive amounts of CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide, amplifying warming.
Forests, increasingly prone to drying out and wildfires due to climate change, can switch from a carbon sink to a carbon source.
Extreme temperatures brought on by climate change will increase human energy consumption for heating and cooling, further exacerbating emissions.
Taking these feedback loops into account, the global carbon budget for preventing AGW is significantly smaller than previously thought. Does the continued use of fossil fuels make any sense after comparing today’s health and longevity benefits with future health and longevity deficits?
The Villains Behind The Rule
Over the past several years, Big Oil Corps have announced seemingly ambitious climate plans.
BP vowed to slash its fossil fuel investments by 35 to 40%. Shell aimed for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Exxon planned to significantly cut emissions and gas flaring and push investments into a potential carbon-free fuel. Chevron aspired to net-zero upstream emissions by 2050. Numerous oil companies joined an initiative to reduce their methane emissions.
Then 2023, the second hottest year on record, revealed their true colors. These companies backtracked on their commitments and ramped up their planet-heating, death-piling fossil fuel businesses, betraying their climate goals.
BP downscaled its emissions reduction target, Exxon quietly pulled funding for algae-based biofuels, and Shell decided against increasing its renewable energy investments. In fact, the US extracted more oil and gas than ever before in 2023, and globally, fossil fuel companies invested double what they should have in oil and gas, according to the International Energy Agency.
The driving force behind this change of heart? A lucrative market. Surging gas prices, spurred by geopolitical tensions from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, led to record profits for these companies.
And profit they have made. The world’s five largest listed oil companies have filled their pockets with more than a quarter of a trillion dollars — $281bn (£223bn) to be exact — since the war began in February 2022, according to Global Witness. Regardless of what happens on the frontlines, the fossil fuel majors are, once more, the undeniable winners of war.
The most recent Carbon Majors report calculated the emissions released by the burning of the coal, oil, and gas, and the production of cement by 169 major companies in 2023. Coal was the source of 41% of the emissions counted in 2023, oil 32%, gas 23% and cement 4%. And half of the world’s climate-heating carbon emissions come from the fossil fuels produced by just 36 companies, including Saudi Aramco, Coal India, ExxonMobil, Shell and numerous Chinese companies, responsible for more than 20bn tonnes of CO2.
A Long History of Deceit
Internal documents from as far back as 1954 contain smoking gun proof, including the “Keeling curve” that has tracked the steady increase of atmospheric carbon, that these companies were well aware of the climate consequences of their products. Yet, they chose to deny this science for more 70 years now, funding efforts to delay action on the climate crisis.
This deception continues today, with deadly oil giant Exxon’s CEO Darren Woods claiming that “the world is off track to meet its climate goals, and the public is to blame” and arguing that big oil is not primarily responsible for the climate crisis. But a 2021 analysis demonstrated that Exxon had downplayed its own role in the climate crisis for decades in public-facing messaging. A drug lord blaming everyone but himself for drug problems.
Oil companies are experts in deception. They’ve spent years painting over their destructive past while downplaying the catastrophic risks they’ve created. And when the inevitable damage is revealed, who do they point the finger at? The very consumers they’ve deceived. It’s a classic blame-the-victim move.
We must move into an era of accountability.
Trusting them to be part of the solution is naive and foolish. We must end energy subsidies that benefit these companies and redirect these funds to more effective investments that reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and improve social services. Despite international pledges at major summits, fossil fuel subsidies hit an all-time high of over $1 trillion in 2022, largely due to geopolitical shocks like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The International Monetary Fund paints an even bleaker picture, estimating that fossil-fuel subsidies surged to a record $7 trillion in 2022, equivalent to 7.1% of the world’s GDP, and surpassing global spending on education and nearly matching worldwide healthcare expenditures.
Eliminating these subsidies could save 1.6 million lives annually, generate $4.4 trillion in revenues, and fast-track progress toward global climate goals. Continuing these subsidies only prolongs our dependence on fossil fuels.
The point here isn’t to produce a specific number or name but to emphasize the scale of the challenge. Unfortunately, most of us are unaware of these facts. The United Nations Secretary-General frames climate change as a choice between collective suicide and collective action.
If you don’t know how big the challenge is, you can justify not investing in the challenge. And lack of awareness leads to a lack of progress and even regression.
Our world is at a stage where every decision related to climate change is pivotal, and we may not have many chances left to act. And we are all going to have to act on this, whether we like it or not. Everyone should be properly explained the stakes we face instead of being lied to on their faces. Because how else do we ever make the wiser choice?
Mortality data is crude and heartless, but it drives policy, and more policy is needed for the deadly trend underway.
As McMichael wrote in an open letter published before his death in 2014, “Our mismanagement of the world’s climate and environment is weakening the foundations of health and longevity.” What would happen if people knew the true scope of the risk at hand?
As the impacts of climate change escalate, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that ignoring the dire consequences of our reliance on fossil fuels is no longer viable. Every instance of inaction only adds fuel to the fire, and zeros to the devastating 1000-ton rule.
Be loud.
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