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The Conversation
The Conversation
Joshua M. Pearce, John M. Thompson Chair in Information Technology and Innovation and Professor, Western University

COP28: How 7 policies could help save a billion lives by 2100

In a recent review of more than 180 peer-reviewed articles — which I conducted with fellow researcher Richard Parncutt — we found that a scientific consensus has formed around the so-called 1,000-ton rule.

The 1,000-ton rule states that a person is killed every time humanity burns 1,000 tons of fossil carbon. Shockingly, we found that a 2 C temperature rise equates to a billion prematurely dead people over the next century, killed as a result of a wide range of global warming related climate breakdowns.

These findings were derived from a review of the climate literature that attempted to quantify future human deaths from a long list of mechanisms.

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