Cold facts reveal a better way to tackle climate change

The deaths of hundreds of people in the recent heatwaves in Canada and the northwestern US makes the news headlines, but globally, about 300,000 deaths are caused each year by heat, whereas almost 1.7 million people die of cold. Picture: Getty Images

Headlines across the world tell us that hundreds have died in recent heatwaves in Canada and the northwestern US. The stories invariably blame climate change and admonish us to tackle it urgently. However, they mostly reveal how one-sided climate alarmist reporting leaves us badly informed.

The stories are based on a kernel of truth. Global warming is a real and man-made problem that needs addressing. And as temperatures increase, it will make heatwaves likelier. But these reports turn a blind eye to the full story.

Heat deaths are click-worthy when bodies pile up during a news cycle, primed to be blamed on global warming. Yet most heat deaths happen without a news crew to document them. Studies show that heat kills about 2500 people every year in the US and Canada. Heat deaths are a bigger problem than the news reports would suggest.

However, and almost entirely ignored by politicians and media, rising temperatures also reduce cold waves and cold deaths. Cold restricts blood flow to keep our core warm, increasing blood pressure and killing through strokes, heart attacks and respiratory diseases. Those deaths are rarely reported because they don’t fit the climate narrative. If they were a curiosity, the indifference might be justified, but they aren’t. Each year more than 100,000 people die from cold in the US and 13,000 in Canada – more than 40 cold deaths for every heat death.

Indeed, cold deaths vastly outweigh heat deaths worldwide. This is not just true for cold countries such as Canada but also warmer countries such as the US, Spain and Brazil. Even in India, cold deaths outweigh heat deaths by seven to one. Globally, about 300,000 deaths are caused each year by heat, whereas almost 1.7 million people die of cold.

A recent study found that higher temperatures are responsible for about 100,000 of those heat deaths. But a landmark study in The Lancet shows that climate change in the past decades has avoided more cold deaths across every region than it has caused additional heat deaths. On average, it has avoided upwards of twice as many deaths, resulting in perhaps 200,000 fewer cold deaths a year.

When reporting emphasises the need to cut CO2, it pushes some of the least effective ways to help future victims of heat and cold. Climate policy will, at best, slightly slow the increase in heat deaths. We already know much more effective ways to help.

Heat deaths are generally declining in countries with good data because heat deaths can be tackled effectively with more widely available airconditioning, heat alerts, open public pools and airconditioned malls while encouraging people to use fans and drink plenty of water. This is clear for the US: it has experienced increasing hot days since 1960, affecting a much larger population, yet the number of heat deaths has halved. The rest of the world needs access to the same simple technologies.

Tackling cold deaths turns out to be much harder because it requires well-heated homes over weeks and months. Moreover, strong climate policies will increase heating costs and make cold deaths even more prevalent.

Researchers have looked at the natural experiment in the US since 2010, when fracking delivered a dramatic reduction in the costs of natural gas. This made gas-heated homes warmer and safer and poorer households could afford better heating. The study estimated that these lower energy prices saved about 11,000 Americans from dying in winter every year. This alone saves four times the lives lost from all North American heat deaths.

If climate policy is to work, it has to drive up prices of energy to reduce consumption. A climate policy that drives gas prices back up will mean fewer people will be able to afford to heat their home adequately, and the consequent death rate will go back up.

Climate change is still a real problem that affects many other areas than heat and cold. We need to tackle it effectively through innovation to make green energy cheap enough that everyone will want to switch.

But when it comes to tackling heat and cold deaths, climate reporting leaves us badly informed. It makes us focus on the costliest and least effective way to help future victims of heat and cold. It even risks exacerbating cold deaths by raising heating costs. Moreover, it simply tells us a misleading story of heat deaths, ignoring the much greater avoided cold deaths. For now, global warming saves us more deaths than it causes, possibly 100,000 lives each year.

Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus and visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His latest book is False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.