CO2 Responsibilities and Health Burdens

From "Climate Change and Global Health: Quantifying a Growing Ethical Crisis," by Jonathan Patz et al., published in EcoHealth, 2007:

Comparison of undepleted cumulative carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (by country) for 1950 to 2000 versus the regional distribution of four climate-sensitive health effects (malaria, malnutrition, diarrhea, and inland flood-related fatalities).

(a) CO2 emissions data source: Marland G, Boden TA, Andres RJ (2007) Global, regional, and national fossil fuel CO2 emissions. In: Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change, Oak Ridge, TN: Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy. ...

(b) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ‘business as usual’ greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions scenario, ‘IS92a,’ and the HadCM2 general circulation model (GCM) of the UK Hadley Centre were used to estimate climate changes relative to ‘baseline’ 1961-1990 levels of GHGs and associated climate conditions.

Existing quantitative studies of climate-health relationships were used to estimate relative changes in diarrhea, malaria, inland and coastal flooding, and malnutrition from 2000 to 2030 (McMichael et al., 2004).

This is only a partial list of potential health outcomes, and there are significant uncertainties in all of the underlying models. These estimates should therefore be considered a conservative, approximate, estimate of the health burden of climate change.

See also: "Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change," published by The Lancet and University College London.