In the NewsThe GuardianAugust 4, 2020

Rising temperatures will cause more deaths than all infectious diseases – study

The growing but largely unrecognized death toll from rising global temperatures will come close to eclipsing the current number of deaths from all the infectious diseases combined if planet-heating emissions are not constrained, a major new study has found. Rising temperatures are set to cause particular devastation in poorer, hotter parts of the world that will struggle to adapt to unbearable conditions that will kill increasing numbers of people, the research has found.

By Oliver Milman

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Valuing the Global Mortality Consequences of Climate Change Accounting for Adaptation Costs and Benefits

Carleton, Tamma and Jina, Amir and Delgado, Michael and Greenstone, Michael and Houser, Trevor and Hsiang, Solomon and Hultgren, Andrew and Kopp, Robert E. and McCusker, Kelly and Nath, Ishan and Rising, James and Rode, Ashwin and Seo, Hee Kwon and and Viaene, Arvid and Yuan, Jiacan and Zhang, Alice Tianbo, Valuing the Global Mortality Consequences of Climate Change Accounting for Adaptation Costs and Benefits (Aug. 3, 2020). National Bureau of Economics Working Paper No. 27599, Available at NBER: http://www.nber.org/papers/w27599

This paper estimates that the release of an additional ton of carbon dioxide today will cause mean damages to global mortality risk valued at $36.6 under a high emissions scenario and $17.1 under a moderate scenario, using a 2% discount rate that is justified by US Treasury rates over the last two decades.
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