15. Green house gas emissions kill people. How many per ton?

When we talk about the climate crisis, we do not often discuss how many people will die from it. Part of why, is that it is difficult to estimate how many, because of lot of them will be indirect. People dying from natural disasters, or deaths in conflicts spurred by lack of resources. Many of the deaths due to COVID19 are also indirectly caused the climate crisis. People (usually PoC) who had weakened lungs from living with air pollution, were far more likely to die from the disease.

But I did find one certain number in the book The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells. 150 million more people will die from air pollution in a 2 degree warmer world, compared to a 1.5 degree warmer world. 150 million. That is the equivalent of 25 Shoahs (Holocausts). Twice the death toll of world war 2. And this is a very conservative estimate of the total death toll of the climate crisis.

I also know that if we stopped emitting tomorrow, warming would reach 2 degrees AT LEAST.

So I did the dysmal math. How many people will die per ton CO2e* emitted?

Since 1850, we have emitted 2400 000 000 000 tons of CO2e. 2.4 trillion. Most of which has been added to the atmosphere in the past 30 years. Which cause (at least) 2 degrees of warming. Which in turn kills (at the very very least) 150 million.

1.2 trillion tons causes (at least) 1 degree rise in global temperatures.

12 billion tons per 0.01 degree rise.

16000 tons kills (at least) 1 person.

1 ton of CO2e kills (at least) 0.0000625 people.

By these estimates, no single person is (technically) responsible for a whole other persons death. Even if you are 100 years old, living in Quatar, where the average person emits 37 tons a year.

But, if you take all my facebook friends (I have around 1000). Using the average danish emission of 17 tons per year per person, and estimate the average age of my facebook friends as 32 years. You can see that the way of life of me and all my facebook friends, will kill at least 2 people, with the GHG we have emitted so far in our lives.

My city has 197 426 inhabitants. Average age 40. We will kill 493.5 people with our emissions just this year. 8390.6 people in total with the GHG we have emitted so far in our lives. At least.

The biggest company in Denmark, Maersk, emitted 35.5 millions tons CO2e last year. Which will cost (at least) 2218.75 people their lives. Imagine if they had shot 2218 people last year, rather than dooming them to death by GHG pollution. They would have been shut down.

It is almost impossible to stay within 1.5 degrees warming, which we will hit within the next 4 years. It is even optimistic to stay within 2 degrees of warming. But we must try. We have to reduce emissions fast, and also remove emissions from the atmosphere. Every 0.01 degree rise we avoid, we can potentially save (at least) 750 000 lives. If I can get every one of my facebook friends to reduce their emissions by just 3 ton per year for the next 30 years, we can save 56 lives. 3 ton is the equivalent of one trip to Thailand and back.