A significant piece in Foreign Policy, “The Obvious Climate Strategy Nobody Will Talk About,” points out that the greatest determinant of a changing climate on human life is not the climate itself, but rather the level of development put in place to make societies independent of weather variations.
“The world hasn’t, in recent decades, made much progress on cutting overall emissions,” the authors write. “But it has become much more resilient to all kinds of climate extremes.”
“The average resident of Earth today is more than 90% less likely to die from floods, droughts, storms, or other extreme climate events today than in the 1920s—and that’s almost entirely the result of a phenomenal decline in the number of people living in poverty without access to such things as safe housing, functioning infrastructure, and good institutions.”
When the world’s population growth since 1920 is taken into account, the reduction is more like 95%.
Take China, for example. Flooding in 1887 claimed as many as 2 million lives, and 1931 floods killed up to 4 million. Famines have killed millions in China. But today, flooding deaths in China are below 500, and there has been no famine in decades. Why? Development!
