Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet

by Hannah Ritchie

The problem was that I mistook the increase in the frequency of reporting as an increase in the frequency of disasters. I mistook an increase in the intensity of my second-hand suffering for an increase in the intensity of global suffering. In reality I had no idea what was happening. Were disasters getting worse? Were there more this year than last? Were there more people dying than ever before? After Hans Rosling taught me that extreme poverty and child mortality were falling and education and life expectancy were rising, I went looking for other areas where my preconceptions might be wrong. I started with data on ‘natural’ disasters. I would have bet a lot of money that more people were dying from disasters today than a century ago. I was completely wrong. Death rates from disasters have actually fallen since the first half of the 20th century. And not just by a little bit. They have fallen roughly 10-fold.3, 4 It’s at this point that I should make one thing clear: none of the above means that climate change is not happening. The decline in deaths from disasters does not mean that disasters are getting weaker or less common. Deniers often misuse this data to downplay the existence or risks of climate change. But that’s not what the data shows us at all. In the past it was common for disasters to claim millions of lives a year. The 1920s, 30s and 40s were particularly bad. There were a few large earthquakes which claimed many lives: China, Japan, Pakistan, Turkey and Ita...