Lhe last twelve months have been the hottest on record on the planet. This reality makes climate change not just a threat to the future, but an increasingly important part of our present. But it is not a present, nor a future, shared equitably.
Poor countries are often in already hot climates. As the planet warms, they therefore experience a greater number of days where temperatures are hardly compatible with human life (beyond 35 degrees). Additionally, poverty is a significant barrier to adaptation: When it’s 35 degrees in Texas, an office worker can go from the cool air of their home to the cool air of their office while traveling in their car. fresh; When it’s 35 degrees in Pakistan, people in rural areas feel hot in their homes, where there is no air conditioning, and often have to do physical work outside.
The result of combining these two forces could not be more dangerous: Global Impact Lab researchers predict that, by 2100, if the emissions trajectory is not changed, rising temperatures will cause six million more deaths per year, which is more than all deaths from infectious diseases combined today. However, this increase in mortality will occur exclusively in the poorest countries.
Responsibility for this state of affairs is equally inequitable. The richer a person is, the more they consume, and the more they consume, the more they contribute to CO emissions.2. The carbon may have been emitted in a factory in China or on a highway in France, but the result is the same. According to Lucas Chancel’s calculations, French economist teaching at Sciences Po, if we consider the total carbon footprint of each person, the 10% of the largest emitters are responsible for 50% of emissions. The carbon footprint of a relatively wealthy resident of the United States is 120 times larger than that of a poor resident of Africa.
Putting a cost on a human life
For this reason, at the invitation of Brazil, I am presenting, on Wednesday April 17, at the meeting of G20 finance ministers, a proposal to mobilize, in a sustainable manner, funds in order to compensate the poorest citizens in the world and help them adapt to climate change.
Total CO emissions2 of the United States and Europe, combined, amounts to approximately 14 billion tons per year. Every ton contributes to the warming of our planet and causes deaths. Can we put a figure on the cost that these emissions impose on the poorest countries? This requires putting a cost on a human life – an exercise used in administrations to calculate, for example, the value of a highway ramp which would reduce accidents. Thus, the American Environmental Protection Agency today uses a value of 7 million dollars (6.6 million euros). By combining an estimate of the cost of a year of life lost, the expected effect of a tonne of CO2 on temperatures and the effect of temperatures on climate, the researchers calculated the monetary value of the effect of each ton of carbon on future mortality: 37 dollars.
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