“Since the 1920s, the number of” climate-related “deaths has fallen by more than 97 percent,” notes Professor Gale Pooley. Climate-related deaths include fatalities from floods, droughts, storms, and wildfires. “Deaths have declined 97+% because richer, smarter and more resilient societies reduce disaster deaths.”
“As the global population quadrupled over the century, the risk per million declined from 241 in the 1920s to 1.5 in the 2020s. This is a 99.38 percent decrease. Adjusted for population size differences, for every person who dies from climate today, there were over 160 who died in the 1920s. If the rate had remained the same over the past 100 years, there would have been an average of 1,928,000 climate-related deaths from 2020–2023 instead of 12,270. Our ability to innovate around climate risks has been astonishing as long as government policy does not counterproductively interfere.”
People used to die like flies in China from floods. Between 422,499 and 4,000,000 people died in the 1931 China floods. Between 930,000 and 2,000,000 people died in the 1887 flood of China’s Yellow River. Between 400,000 and 900,000 died in the 1938 Yellow River Flood. 145,000 died in the 1938 flood of China’s Yangtse River.
In the 2017 China floods, only 203 people died. 350 died in the 2016 China floods. Far fewer people died in those floods than in floods in the same regions in the early and mid-20th century.
In other good news, a nasty worm that caused tens of millions of people to scream with unbearable pain has been largely eradicated: “No guinea worm was reported” in 2024. Guinea worms used to inflict burning pain on millions of people in Africa and South Asia every year. They would grow up to 3 feet long while living inside a person’s body, then burst out of their foot or other sensitive areas of their anatomy, such as their eyeball or their penis. “With a guinea worm infection, you get a gross open wound from which the worm emerges over a period of weeks to months with extreme painfulness. There were millions of cases in the 80s, and now there are none. Incredible human progress.”
A cancer vaccine for dogs doubles their survival rate for certain cancers. Life-saving vaccines are also being developed for humans. Personalized cancer vaccines have been developed that will cut death rates from breast cancer and skin cancer. And Moderna is developing a cancer vaccine that is expected to cut cancer survivors’ risk of death or recurrence by 44% after high-risk melanomas.
