Four BILLION people could die by 2050 due to climate change

[SamuelTheThird]

This staggering news went under the radar. This is not some fly-by-night group stating this.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/16/economic-growth-could-fall-50-over-20-years-from-climate-shocks-say-actuaries

Without urgent action to accelerate decarbonisation, remove carbon from the atmosphere and repair nature, the plausible worst-case hit to global economies would be 50% in the two decades before 2090, the IFoA report said.

At 3C or more of heating by 2050, there could be more than 4 billion deaths, significant sociopolitical fragmentation worldwide, failure of states (with resulting rapid, enduring, and significant loss of capital), and extinction events.

[Botany]

1. The Blue Whale very well might go extinct because their food called krill needs cold water and the

City of New Orleans is gonna go under water.

[dalton99a]

7. +1

[Botany]

9. In 1856 and in Germany in 1862

Last edited Wed Jul 8, 2026, 06:29 AM - Edit history (2)

They ran experiments that showed the more CO 2 you had in a body of gas the more heat that
body of gas would hold. That fact has never been disproven the fossil fuel industries have spent
billions to make millions of Americans believe that is not true.

[rampartd]

11. thats why i keep supplies in my attic.

i will be here, dead or alive.

[orthoclad]

30. Most of the human population lives on coast lines

We will see simultaneous massive migration and massive death.

NOTHING is more important, but we're bound up in the news cycle of the rodeo clown.

Our highly-dependent civ is not designed for resilience, it's designed for quick profit. Supply lines will break down, including food, medicine, and fuel.

Learn to garden. Potatoes have a high yield of calories per square meter. Collect rainwater. Solar panels. I planted black locust to burn for fuel. It grows fast, coppices well, and yields anthracite-like heat in a wood stove. I called it "planting my solar power".

If you're young, move to a higher altitude. Years ago I read that seas will rise by hundreds of feet if all the ice melts. It's happened before: the North Sea was land when the Ice Age was on. I haven't checked recent calculations. Remember: it's not how far you are from a coast, it's how high you are.

I reminded people of that before a storm surge and got them to move valuables higher. They thought because they were hundreds of yards from the water they were ok. They weren't. I'm glad I got that word out. The flood reached them, but they were prepared.

That was almost 20 years ago. It's worse now.

We've wasted decades of planning and organization. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House - we should have begun then. The destructiveness is in the RATE of change; we lost our chance to slow the impacts down by moving to higher ground systematically and making other prep. This is why I went into massive shock for T2.0: that scuttled our last slim chance to prevent and cope. I had to hibernate until I could cope again.

Every minute we spend now preparing for a drastic rate of change will pay off tenfold or more. But if we wait until our feet are wet while our hair is burning...

[-misanthroptimist]

2. Maybe the problem will go away if we ignore it harder?

That seems to be the prevailing attitude.

[Volaris]

4. Its more likely the problem will be self-correcting..

4 billion dead in less than a century, will put a crimp on the demand side of the fossil fuel equation that's for damn sure.
Not pretty for any of us, but the environment and the planet, WILL find a way to outlive this problem we have created...it doesn't much care if we're still there on the other side or not.

[OGBuzz]

3. We are lousy stewards of this planet. Unfortunately a lot of those who are responsible will not be here

to reap the "rewards" of their actions or inactions.

[canetoad]

17. More like

An invasive species.

There should be a lot fewer or us than there are.

[OGBuzz]

35. Mother nature will take care of the problem eventually.

[Johnny2X2X]

5. I fear the world will respond with authoritarianism

The upheaval and turmoil will give authoritarians issues to run on like immigration.

Mass migration because of climate change is already occurring and it's almost never discussed as such. In the US, much of the immigration we've seen at the Southern border is partially due to climate change. Subsistence farming in the mountains of Central and South America has become rarer because climate change has shutdown some systems that brought nutrients to those regions. This prompted millions of people to leave small towns and head to the cities looking for work thus taxing the infrastructure in those cities and overcrowding them leading to higher crime and gangs that families flee by heading North. We're seeing the same thing in Europe. It's not going to slow down.

[OGBuzz]

36. Hunger is a powerful motivator.

[misanthrope]

45. History shows that is highly likely

Peace thrives when there is plentitude and scarcity brings war.

[GPV]

6. It is the natural consequence of how we treat our planet. The

bad part is that many of those people will be from national that didn't contribute much or at all to the situation.

[Stacey Grove]

8. What can you expect from a species

that shits where it eats? The only place where we can live.

[rampartd]

10. 4 billion people could die by 2050 due to old age.

or from the unvaccinated childhood diseases.

the less populated earth should be a very nice place for the survivors.

i plan to stay in new orleans until the gulf of mexico reaches my door step.

[AloeVera]

12. Pretty sure they weren't talking about deaths from old age.

[Another Jackalope]

14. Given the current death rate, only 1.5 billion would die of natural causes.

The other 2.5 billion would be what are called "excess deaths" over and above the average expected number.
The birth rate will plunge as well, so there won't be as many replacement births.

It's going to be an "interesting" couple of decades.

[AloeVera]

20. Why would they take rhe death rate into account when calculating

...the impact of climate change?

No, the 4 billion is strictly the impact imo.

I think about the sweet little 4-year old in my family and I just want to cry. The world we are leaving him won't be interesting, it will be unbearably horrifying and sad. Imo.

[Another Jackalope]

34. Fair enough. I have no problem with an estimate of 4 billion deaths by then

I'm expecting a global population reduction of well over 95% when all is said and done. I think that our numbers will stabilize at around 50 million eventually - not that I'll be around for more than the next 20 years...

[BannonsLiver]

13. You know who I bet won't be one of the 4 billion?

Tay Tay



I’ll show myself out.

[SamuelTheThird]

16. Probably right

Ultra wealthy can and do build bunkers

But if your reaction to billions potentially dying is to crack a joke, I don't know what to tell you.

[BannonsLiver]

19. Awww there there.

[SamuelTheThird]

21. Youre kicking the thread, so good

You could contribute to the topic in some way, maybe?

What are your thoughts on geo-engineering?

[SamuelTheThird]

23. Speaking of

And her CO2 emissions have been considerably more since this was posted

https://carbonmarketwatch.org/2024/02/13/taylor-swift-and-the-top-polluters-department/

Aviation represents 2.5% of the world’s carbon emissions (and likely much more in non-carbon emissions) yet only 1% of the world’s population are responsible for about 50% of all aviation emissions. Moreover, private planes are up to 14 times more polluting, per individual, than commercial planes and 50 times more polluting than trains, according to reporting by Transport and the Environment.

[BannonsLiver]

24. That's cool. When do you think Taylor will release a new album?

[SamuelTheThird]

25. When do you think people wil stop worshipping billionaires?

[BannonsLiver]

26. Two weeks?

[mr715]

28. Have Travis and she considering having kids?

I know they both have important careers controlling global politics, but I'd be interested in hearing the gossip.

[Another Jackalope]

15. No realistic plan in place to avoid this scenario

Sandy Trust, the lead author of the report, said there was no realistic plan in place to avoid this scenario.

He said economic predictions, which estimate that damages from global heating would be as low as 2% of global economic production for a 3C rise in global average surface temperature, were inaccurate and were blinding political leaders to the risks of their policies.

The climate risk assessments being used by financial institutions, politicians and civil servants to assess the economic effects of global heating were wrong, the report said, because they ignored the expected severe effects of climate change such as tipping points, sea temperature rises, migration and conflict as a result of global heating.

“[They] do not recognise there is a risk of ruin. They are precisely wrong, rather than being roughly right,” the report said.

There has never been a realistic plan to avoid this scenario. All talk otherwise is simply whistling past the graveyard. Don't look up.

Estamos tan jodidos.

[flvegan]

18. That's a shame. n/t

[PCB66]

27. I was born in 1947

My goal is to make it to 2050.

If so I will be one of the four billion to die.

[mr715]

29. Climate change is solvable.

There is a price point where using energy to fix carbon and bury it at the bottom of the sea will be essential.

Climate change COULD kill a lot of people, but it won't kill as many as it could because we are living in the Anthropocene and we control nature, and economics moves mountains.

[SamuelTheThird]

31. We control nature???

We could mitigate climate change with massive change, but scaling up carbon sequestration is something climate scientists have discussed- and it's extraordinarily difficult.

The only thing that MIGHT work is aerosol geoengineering. And that has a whole host of problems and would be a tremendous gamble.

[mr715]

32. I don't particularly like the idea of orbital mirrors

but the technology is possible.

[TheProle]

33. It's a global issue

and requires global cooperation and coordination. Trump and republicans, without a doubt, lack the foresight, intelligence and political will to be a good faith partner, so we need Democrats in control of congress and the White House and strong public pressure to act.

But the elephant in the room (though absent from this thread) is the fact that China contributes over a third of all CO2 pumped into the atmosphere and contributes more than the US and India combined.

Even if the US did everything as correctly and timely as humanly possible, China is and will remain a major stumbling block to the reversal of climate change dangers.

[miyazaki]

37. Historically USA is the worst polluter in human history. nt

[TheProle]

38. That is true, but mostly useful for finger-pointing (have at it)

But action in the here and now has to be taken against what is happening in the here and now. And China is pumping out more than twice as much as the US.

[miyazaki]

39. Per capita isn't any prettier, along with being the second worse polluter atm.

You pointed first.

[TheProle]

40. What I did was point out current conditions

If there is a call for the US to admit historical culpability, I will be all for the US taking accountability.

If there is to be substantive action, we’ll need to recognize and mitigate what’s happening now. And nothing substantive can be done with cooperation of the worst offender.

[miyazaki]

41. US has been then greatest polluter for 80% of the last century.

That's some terrible context to have to point out.

Ironically, China in it's current position, and who conveniently makes a bulk of the worlds products, is probably doing more now than we are in this dilemma.

[Kaleva]

44. They'll have to do a great deal more to have an impact

At their current rate, China’s cumulative contribution to greenhouse gas emissions since 1850 will match the US’s by 2100.

[miyazaki]

46. By 2100 half the population will be dead and the survivors speaking Chinese.

[Kaleva]

43. China produces about as much greenhouse gases

as all the other industrialized nations combined and that include the US

[miyazaki]

47. Ask them if they care. They do, but they'll just point at whats already

been stated, but apparently meaningless context.

[WarGamer]

42. The planet won't miss them...