[[link removed]]

LANDSLIDES RAISE A QUESTION: WHAT COUNTS AS A CLIMATE-RELATED DEATH?
 
[[link removed]]


 

Kate Aronoff
September 3, 2024
The New Republic
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Deaths from extreme heat, landslides, and other severe weather seem
to be rising. Can they be added to fossil fuels’ death toll? _

Relief personnel conduct a search and rescue operation after the
landslides in Wayanad, India, on August 2., AFP PHOTO/India’s
National Disaster Response Force/Getty Images

 

Last Sunday, after a stretch of relentless rain caused by an
“atmospheric river,” a hillside above Ketchikan, Alaska, gave way
and slid into town. One person was killed. “Scientists said that
intensifying rainfall, driven by climate change, could increase the
risk of landslides in the area of Southeast Alaska that includes
Ketchikan,” _The New York Times_ reported
[[link removed]].

 
While deadly landslides are a rarity in the United States—for now,
anyway—other countries have become familiar with such tragedies in
our warming world. Last month in southern India, in the state of
Kerala, a downpour on soil already wet from monsoons led to a
landslide that killed at least 308 people. A recent study
[[link removed]]
from World Weather Attribution has now found that the rains preceding
the landslide were 10 percent heavier as a result of human-caused
climate change. Did Kerala’s dead die of climate change? What about
those killed by extreme heat in the U.S.?

 

 

Another new study
[[link removed]],
from the journal of the American Medical Association, finds that
21,518 people have died of heat
[[link removed].]
since 1999. Since then, heat-related deaths have increased by 117
percent, with a steep increase since 2016. The hottest of those years
was 2023, when at least 2,325 died of such causes in the U.S.—as did
an astonishing 47,000 people
[[link removed]]
in Europe, which endured intense heat waves. This year is poised to be
even hotter
[[link removed]],
thanks in part to heat waves like the one that descended over the
eastern U.S. earlier this week.

Assessing what counts as a heat-related death is complicated, and some
studies estimate that the actual number could be far higher. If you
die after collapsing on the job
[[link removed]],
having overheated in the scorching midday sun—maybe in a part of the
country
[[link removed]]
that’s only started to get that hot in recent years—the death
certificate
[[link removed]]
might not even say
[[link removed]]
you died of a heat-related cause. The same is true for other climate
change–related deaths. Hurricanes, derechos, and other extreme
weather events are certainly being supercharged by rising
temperatures, and scientists’ ability to assess the precise role
climate change plays in that is getting better
[[link removed]].
But it’s not an _exact_ science, as they say.

Assigning a death toll to the climate crisis is even trickier. Some
cases might seem straightforward: people caught in the flames of
wildfires that were fueled by an abundance of dry brush after a hot,
dry spring; a tenant who drowned after being stuck in a New York City
basement apartment
[[link removed]]
during flooding from a hurricane
[[link removed]]
that strengthened over unusually warm water in the Gulf of Mexico.
Less obvious examples also come to mind. What about a small-scale
farmer who is pushed off his land and into dangerous parts of the
informal economy, after years of drought crushed his crop yields? If
he’s killed in a shoot-out, could his death be considered
climate-related too?

 

 

The question of responsibility has loomed large over conversations
about climate change. Oil companies have sought to popularize
[[link removed]]
the idea of a “carbon footprint,” casting themselves alongside
ordinary consumers as humble soldiers in the fight against rising
temperatures and the greenhouse gas emissions that cause them. A
controversial 2017 study
[[link removed]],
by contrast, argued that just 100 companies are responsible for 71
percent of global emissions, flattening some arguably important
questions about who’s buying all that fuel. Is climate change the
result of a conspiracy of oil and gas executives plotting to stymie
climate action at every turn, poisoning our politics with their
seemingly endless budgets for lobbying and campaign donations and
disinformation? Are humans just too selfish to accept paying a little
bit more to cut carbon, or is the fossil fuel economy simply too
stubbornly baked into the functioning of the global economy to be
displaced along any reasonable time frame?

Governments and policy thinkers have started coming up with novel,
innovative ways to translate these debates into the real world. After
extensive, costly flooding
[[link removed]]
caused chaos in Vermont last year, the state legislature enacted a
“climate superfund” law
[[link removed]]
requiring major oil companies to pay for climate adaptation and
resilience projects, with amounts assessed based on the share of
emissions they produced between 1995 and 2024.

As deaths and displacement from extreme heat and hurricanes mount,
though, discussions of who bears responsibility for climate-related
deaths could become just as important as those about who’s causing
the climate to change in the first place. A number of public interest
lawyers have proposed trying corporate polluters with criminal charges
[[link removed]], including homicide
[[link removed]],
for their responsibility in driving excess emissions, defrauding the
public, and stalling political progress.

 

Questions of what counts as a climate-related death—and who’s
responsible for that—matter at the micro level too. Is it the fault
of a renter who baked in a sweltering high-rise apartment for not
getting an A.C. unit installed? Or could their landlord be considered
a climate criminal in miniature? Very few places
[[link removed]] have
laws mandating that building owners keep their tenants’ units below
a certain temperature, though, so there are no laws to hold them
accountable.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is in the
process of finalizing the country’s first-ever workplace heat
protections
[[link removed]],
creating specific mandates beyond OSHA’s general requirement that
employers provide safe workplaces. Companies will need to monitor job
site temperatures, establish procedures for recognizing and responding
to heat-related distress, and provide water and cooling breaks in
hotter conditions. Such protections have already been written into
some union contracts.

Policies that protect workers from bosses, and tenants from landlords,
will keep more people safe in a warming world, as will the unions that
fight for them. Housing and labor politics—to name just two
areas—are climate politics. If debates about who bears the most
responsibility for climate change can seem almost hopelessly abstract,
debates about who’s failing to protect us from its deadly
consequences are almost refreshingly material. That’s not an
argument for ignoring corporate polluters’ crimes. But these more
proximate struggles about renter safety, for example, can also help
build up the organizations and mass constituencies needed to dissolve
core business models of the companies that are causing the broader
problems, replace the fuels that currently power the world, and save
lives.

===

Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at _The New Republic._

* Human Caused Climate Change; Climate Related Deaths; Workplace
Heat Protections;
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]