Should we lead with the death toll?
Or would the alarmism backfire?
Here’s a crazy idea: Every year, some 7 million people die from avoidable climate- and environment-related causes — the same death toll COVID-19 has reached after nearly five years. Around the world, some 489,000 die prematurely from heat stress, 6.7 million from air pollution, and 40,000 from natural disasters every year.
Your eyes are probably glazing over from these stats. At this point, most of us are immune to the word ‘death toll’ and too tired to understand what a number like 7 million actually feels like in the context of human life.
It’s not a problem unique to climate, but it’s one the climate space struggles with more than most. There is a lot of talk (some of it from me) about reducing alarmism, moving away from gloom-and-doom messaging, and injecting optimism and even humour into the discourse on climate change.
I stand by this; we can each only take so much heaviness in our lives, and doom and gloom messaging tends to have a paralysing rather than a galvanising effect.
I also think much of it is misleading.
We often hear refrains about climate change representing ‘the end of the world.’ Yet proper risk analysis reveals there is only a very slim chance that climate change wipes out the whole of humanity. At this stage, it is not a true existential threat, and it works very differently to threats that have been ranked higher on the existential risk scale (AI, biological warfare and nuclear war in particular).
And yet we cannot ignore that climate change and environmental mismanagement will be an existential threat for many people. In fact, it already is.
19,000 people died today because of avoidable environmental issues like air pollution. The same number will die again tomorrow.
People are dying every day because of climate change and environmental concerns, and yet when we frame these in policy debates or protests, we continue using abstract language like “future generations” or “the planet.”
I spent most of the 2020 lockdowns in Melbourne, where we received a grim daily virus count and death toll from our increasingly exhausted Premier. Every number greater than zero felt real. It felt like a big deal. Eradicating COVID was the only thing anyone was thinking about.
Yet we have thousands dying every day from a slower-burning cause. But just because the cause is slow-moving, does that make it any less urgent?
My question is: should we start leading with the death toll?
On the one hand, the numbers are shocking — and they might shift perception in a good way. They might also recenter the climate conversation onto human health, which might broaden the base.
On the other hand, how many more death tolls can we take? Gaza, Ukraine, floods here, earthquakes there there, measles (FFS) — is another death toll really going to get anyone’s attention right now?
Are we better off leading with optimism, or with single stories like I wrote about a few weeks ago?
I don’t know the answer. Climate change appears to be one of those issues that doesn’t respond to reason; we could write a front-page NYT article about how many people have died from climate change, and readers might just flick right past it. The more we learn about tragedies we feel we have more control over, the more the doom and gloom becomes part of our DNA.
I don’t know if the death toll is an effective message, but I’m wondering if it’s worth a try.
That’s it from me this week, folks — have a restful weekend.
What we’re curious about this week
📚 Book: Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream, by Megan Greenwell — a fascinating, human look at the toll PE has taken on almost every sector and, therefore, every part of our lives.
🎙️ Podcast: Kids These Days: The Impact of Tech, Social Media and AI on Adolescents — A fantastic roundtable with some very unique guests and perspectives on the additional struggles technology is imposing on young people. Highly recommend.
Ways we can help 🫶
🎯 Need help building an organic lead-generating machine? → See our lead gen services
📥 Want to know what’s trending in the world of sustainability reporting? → Download our free PDF: 2025 State of Sustainability Reporting
📣 Share this with your climate tech marketing team