![]() ![]() But the disruption only results in a tiny drop in the overall concentration of CO 2 in the atmosphere because of how long the gas effectively lingers. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: American carbon footprint of 3.The pandemic has disrupted life around the world, and stay-at-home orders have kept large swaths of the world at home for months now. The White House’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% to 52% from 2005 levels is nearly double the targets set by the Obama administration in 2015. greenhouse gas pollution in half by 2030 and put Americans on a path to net-zero emissions by 2050. President Joe Biden has pledged to cut U.S. “What I found is that the optimal climate policy now involves large immediate emissions reductions and then full decarbonization by 2050,” Bressler said.īressler noted that there is “uncertainty” around pinpointing mortality projections, although his work includes higher and lower estimates. But if world leaders were able to reach full decarbonization by 2050, that could mean 9 million excess deaths by the end of the century – saving 74 million lives. He explained that, using the model, a scenario that leads to 4 degrees of warming worldwide by the end of the century would cause 83 million excess deaths. The widely used model, created by Nobel Prize winner William Nordhaus, creates a "social cost of carbon" using economic and climate-related factors.īressler told USA TODAY that his study adapted the model to recent scientific literature and how “climate change is projected to affect society.” 'We are so unprepared': Extreme heat fueled by climate change putting farmworkers' lives on the lineīressler’s findings are based on a model known as the Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy model, or DICE. Kate Brown on drought-stricken state: Climate change impacts wildfire battle But how much it goes up further remains to be seen.” “If you were to add in those other impacts, you'd probably expect this number to go up further. “So that is essentially just the net effect of having more hot days and fewer cold days. “I'm only accounting for temperature-related mortality,” Bressler said. ![]() The paper takes into account only deaths caused by rising temperatures, not fatalities resulting from other consequences of climate change, such as infectious diseases, diminished food supplies and flooding. The study notes that it would take the lifetime emissions of 146.2 Nigerians and 12.8 “average world people” to produce the emissions necessary to kill at least one person from heat by 2100. “There are a significant number of lives that can be saved by reducing emissions, both at small scales and large scales,” Bressler told USA TODAY. ![]() Bressler’s study examines emissions from individuals, coal-fired power plants and more in causing deaths worldwide from rising temperatures.īressler’s paper also found that if we were to remove all of the emissions from a coal-fired power plant for just one year and "replace that with a zero-emissions alternative," that could save as many as 904 lives from heat-related deaths over the next 80 years. Daniel Bressler, a Ph.D candidate at Columbia University. The peer-reviewed paper, published Thursday in the journal Nature Communications, was written by R. A new study found that the lifetime carbon emissions of just 3.5 Americans is enough to result in one additional heat-related death between 20. ![]()
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