One way we've adapted to climate change

By Robert Kunzig, ENVIRONMENT Executive Editor

There are two competing global trends in how weather disasters—storms, floods, droughts, extreme heat—affect humans. First, climate change is intensifying the weather, increasing the threat. And second, we’re getting better at preparing and protecting ourselves.

What will be the result of that competition over the next half-century, as climate change worsens? We don’t know yet. But we do know what has happened over the last half-century.

The number of deaths caused by weather disasters worldwide has plummeted, not soared.

That’s not really news, but most people probably aren’t aware of it—because journalists like me don’t talk about it enough, and because of the general nimbus of doom that tends to descend on conversations about climate change. (Pictured above, rising floodwaters in northeastern Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria struck in 2017.)

The latest confirmation of the heartening decline in weather deaths, Madeleine Stone writes for us this week, comes from a report by the World Meteorological Organization. From 1970 through 2019, the WMO found, weather disasters claimed more than two million lives worldwide and caused $3.64 trillion in property damage. Financial losses increased, mostly because economic development was putting more property in harm’s way.

But the global death toll from 2010-2019 was just a third of what it was in the 1970s or ’80s—even though the global population had doubled in the interval. A key reason for the decline, the WMO’s Cyrille Honoré said, is the drastic improvement in weather forecasting and early warning systems.

The regional details are interesting. The one region where the death toll shot up in the last half-century was Europe, and climate change was responsible. Of the 159,438 weather-disaster deaths in Europe, according to the WMO, nearly 80 percent were caused by two heat waves in 2003 and 2010—events for which the continent was clearly unprepared. But Europe is rich enough to prepare. When heat records were smashed again in France in 2019, the death toll was a tenth of what it was in 2003.

Developing countries are of course far more vulnerable to weather disasters. They account for more than 90 percent of the two million deaths in the WMO report. Storms are the big threat in Asia, drought in Africa—a single drought killed some 450,000 people in Ethiopia and Sudan in 1983, well over half the total for the whole continent since 1970. Nothing like that event has happened since. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t. There are signs that this year’s drought in East Africa may well get more serious next year.

Climate change has affected the weather felt by 85 percent of the planet’s population, according to a new study. It’s already tipping the scales toward more weather disasters. We need to stop climate change by getting off fossil fuels as fast as possible.

In the meantime, we need to adapt to what’s coming at us. The evidence of the past half-century is that it’s possible.

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SMARTER PLANET

Speaking of better forecasts: Climate modelers are having a moment, with two sharing a Nobel Prize this year. These experts in earth or planetary science take physics and chemistry to create equations to predict increases in global temperatures. Not only are their predictions turning out to be accurate, Nat Geo reports, recent analyses also have found that many of even the earliest models were remarkably precise. (Pictured above, Nobel recipients Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann, and Giorgio Parisi.)

TAKE FIVE

ONE MOMENT

‘Forced to walk’: Photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Pete McBride took a 250-mile trip on the Yampa River during a record-breaking drought, to see how a wild river inside a Colorado national park was struggling to stay wet. The trip would foreshadow what might be to come for many western rivers as the climate changes. On the first day, he and his companion had repeatedly been forced to walk, barely floating downstream. (Above, McBride captures an image of Len Necefer navigating low water levels with a 60-pound packraft.)

READ MORE 

The National Geographic Society has funded Pete McBride’s work. His new book, Seeing Silence, explores other threatened landscapes. Learn more about the Society’s support of Explorers.

FAST FORWARD

Should we stop offshore oil production? We asked that question in a poll and to readers of last week’s newsletter about the Southern California oil spill. A plurality (35 percent) of 2,200 Americans polled agreed the risks outweighed the benefits, 31 percent disagreed, and 34 percent said they didn’t know, according to the Nat Geo and Morning Consult poll. Our newsletter readers generally were more emphatic, with many citing the history of offshore oil spills (illustrated above in this graphic of SoCal spills). Stop it now, says reader Janet Parker, adding: “We are out of time.” Reader Michael Sparks agrees, but adds: “Considering that we are not all driving electric vehicles and we have not found a replacement for plastic I guess we have to depend on these things for now but we need to do better and find better ways right now.”

This week’s question: Which party do you find most responsible for today’s climate crisis? The United States, the historical leader in carbon emissions? China, the new leader? Oil, gas, and coal producers, and/or global corporations? Or each of us? We’ll have poll results next week. Let us know what you think 
—and we’ll include a few of your comments as well.